Peace Through Strength
by Fjords to Plowshares
Summary: The elves just want to be left alone.  The humans just want their Holy Land.  Louise just wants acknowledgement.  And Naruto just wants everyone in the world to stop acting stupid for ten seconds.  He never was very self-aware.
1. Chapter 1

_Naruto dreamed of flying._

_Naruto's dreams were usually confused, half-meaningless things, easily forgotten by morning. But this one was clear as glass: he was roaring upward out of a field, like a cinder from a bonfire. Looking down, he saw clusters of delicate little buildings: stone and wood, a little metal, mortals climbing futilely toward the heaven they could never reach._

_There was something down there he very much wanted to destroy, but he didn't dare. He'd been trapped there once, by desire and demand, and so he turned his head to the clouds, and soared higher and further away. Toward the East, toward sunrise; that felt right._

_He was free, and he meant to stay that way._

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière climbed to her feet, defying everything, in the grassy courtyard of Tristain Magic Academy. Grass clung to her pink hair where she'd hit her head on the field and the front of her uniform was covered with soot. Behind her, the whispers had already started.

_"Another total failure"_

_"As expected of the Zero"_

_"Hey, be fair, that explosion was a lot bigger than usual"_

She stood straight, body rigid with the effort not to tremble, or scream. Rage and humiliation coursed through her in hot and cold waves, and her knuckles were white on her wand.

_"That's true! She's improving, sort of."_

_"It's just too bad familiars aren't supposed to explode."_

_"Maybe the explosion was her familiar?"_

Despite everything, she forced her expression into stern cool disdain, to match her straight back and haughty posture. A true Noble – and the Vallières had been nobility for as long as there'd been a Tristain – would never allow herself to show weakness, no matter what.

_"Probably. But then how will she seal the contract?"_

_"She'll have to kneel down and kiss the ground, I guess."_

_"I feel like doing that too, to give thanks that I'm alive."_

Would that brave show impress her sister, or her mother? Cattalya, at least, would be kind. But no gentle words could take away the fact that she'd failed.

_"Don't do it, Amelia! You'll steal Louise's familiar!"_

Again.

_"I suppose it would be wrong, to take from one who has so little."_

Just like every other time.

_"Exactly. As a Noble, it's your duty to be kind to the less fortunate."_

Louise kept her eyes squeezed shut, hot and tight with the effort of not crying. _A noble_, she recited to herself, _must always retain control of her features, no matter –_

_"Wait a minute, who's that?"_

_What?_

The smoke had cleared, and in the middle of the crater lay a muscular blond boy, fast asleep, his head being devoured by a frog.

_No, seriously, what?_

Louise blinked, and the picture snapped into focus: he wasn't being eaten, he was just wearing the world's strangest hat. It was a toothy green flannel frog, eyes wide and friendly, mouth stretched over the sleeping boy's blond hair. His light blue pajamas were ordinary enough, at least. He was utterly relaxed, head pillowed on his laced fingers, grinning broadly as he snored away.

Kirche von Zerbst was standing over him, prodding his shoulder uncertainly with her wand.

"You know, Louise," she said after a thoughtful pause, "Even if you paint whiskers on him, he's still a commoner."

Louise was too distracted to give her rival the cutting reply she deserved. Stepping closer, she saw that the strange boy really did have whisker marks, three on each cheek. On a sterner face they might have looked frightening, but as it was he just looked cute, like a baby raccoon or something.

Or how she imagined a baby raccoon would look, anyway. Something sweet and harmless.

But she didn't _want _something sweet and harmless for her familiar! She wanted something powerful, something awe-inspiring – a griffin, or a dragon. Or both, like with a griffin head and a dragon body...Louise sighed. It could be worse; at least she'd managed to summon _something_.

Louise nobly mastered her disappointment, and knelt beside the strange boy to complete the ritual.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Naruto opened his eyes.

He felt like hell: his head was pounding, his stomach hurt, and worst of all, he felt _weak_. He'd been tired before, so exhausted he could barely move, but this was different, like his body didn't _want_ to move.

Weird. Naruto's body _always_ wanted to move, even when it wasn't supposed to, like in class.

A girl with pink hair was standing over him. For a dizzy moment he thought it was Sakura, but no; the pink hair was right, and the (lack of a) bustline was right, but her other features were all wrong: her face was too broad, her forehead was too small, and the eyes were completely the wrong color, a sort of brownish red.

She was saying something. It didn't sound like any language he'd ever heard of – and he'd heard a few, following the pervy sage around – but from the tone it was clearly a lecture, or warning, or something. That was like Sakura too, so much so that his heart lurched with homesickness. He opened his mouth to say something back, and then she learned in and kissed him.

So, not like Sakura. Then: _oh, I get it. I'm still dreaming. One of _those_ dreams, like the pervy sage said would happen sooner or later._

Naruto eyed his dream girl curiously as she pulled her face away from his. She was cute, no denying it, but..._It's too bad my imagination won't give me Sakura-chan. In real life I have to find Sasuke for her, but in a dream it'd be ok..._

Oh well. Time to find out what all the fuss was about. Naruto reached out to touch her cheek, but his body was suddenly too hot, and his hand _burned_, and the effort was too much for him. He slid back into darkness.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

When he woke up next, he was in a bed. A _nice_ bed, with sheets made of a soft slippery fabric he didn't recognize. Overhead was a wooden ceiling, intricately carved with – no, wait, he could see a stone ceiling off to the side, the wooden ceiling belonged to the bed. It was supported by posts at the four corners, and was easily high enough for him to stand up under.

Not that that said much, necessarily – but that wasn't the point! He was just waiting to hit his growth spurt, that was all!

Naruto reached under the covers and scratched himself, yawning hugely. He was just about to try getting back to sleep – that weird weak feeling hadn't just been a dream – when he heard someone clear her throat from somewhere to his right. Groaning, he turned his head, and saw the pink-haired girl watching him, looking testy. Whoops.

"Uhhh – hey?"

She replied with a few words in that same strange language. Even the sound of it was weird, to Naruto's ear: too harsh and too smooth, all at once.

"Sorry, uh, I don't know that language. Never even heard of it."

She said something else, more sharply.

Jiraiya had taught him a few phrases of each language common in the Elemental Countries, and Naruto patiently tried them all, but the girl just stood there, her glare growing darker with each failure.

Probably it was for the best – Naruto didn't really want his first words to her to be "this isn't what it looks like" or "those are some fantastic gazoombas" (especially since they weren't), but Naruto was getting frustrated. Where the hell had the pervy sage taken them, that the language was this completely strange? And why? And for that matter, _how_?

Naruto hauled himself to his feet and took a few uncertain steps toward her. Two people could communicate even if they didn't share a language – the pervy sage (aka the "great Jiraiya") had taught him that, too. All it took was persistence, and a willingness to look like a total idiot.

"I'm Naruto," he said, tapping his chest. "Nah – roo – tow." She just stared at him, but Naruto persevered. "What's your name?" He asked, pointing at her for emphasis.

She pushed his finger out of the way and said something else. She was starting to sound angry.

_Well, if we can't communicate, I can at least make her laugh._

She didn't look any older than him, so he went with the basics. Grinning, he leaped up into the air, spun around, and landed on his hands. But he was weaker than he'd thought; his arms wouldn't support him, and he landed on his head.

_That was supposed to be a handstand! Ow..._

Worse, she still wasn't laughing! He pulled himself into a sitting position, and tried another smile.

She regarded him with a mix of anger and something like despair. Finally she seemed to take pity on him: she grabbed him by the collar and hauled him up. Her tone now was fierce and low. Her face was inches from his.

_Wait a minute. If she wasn't just a dream, then the kiss_...he looked away, blushing.

That just made her angrier. She grabbed his nose and pulled his face back around to hers, voice rising. Naruto twisted free and jumped backward, landing heavily on the windowsill. "What the hell's your problem! I don't care how important you are, don't act so superior!"

But she just yelled right back, and brandished a stick at him. Naruto was just drawing in a breath to hurl more insults – he had some good ones lined up, including one he'd heard Jiraiya use – when the air around him exploded.

Naruto staggered back against the window – which was _shut_, he realized with relief. Still, he could have died! Wishing he had a kunai or something to wave around angrily, he yelled "What the hell was that? You can't go around blowing people up, I ought to – "

The pink-haired girl interjected: "You dare talk back to me! I'll – "

Both froze in mid-rant. Naruto recovered first. "Hey, I understood that!"

His attacker/fantasy/whatever was literally sputtering with rage, momentarily too overwhelmed to form words. _Quick, say something! _"Wow, so, your bed has its own roof, huh?"

_What? Argh, stupid brain, say something else! _"I, uh, I mean, what's your name?"

She recovered her voice. "I am Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière. As you are my familiar, you will address me as 'Miss Vallière'."

_What?_

A little silence fell as they stared at each other.

"Don't you, uh, want to know my name?"

The girl – Louise – frowned some more. "Very well."

He still didn't _really_ understand, but..."Ok! I'm Uzumaki Naruto, ninja of the Leaf and all-around awesome guy! I love ramen and it's my dream to be Hokage!"

Louise had turned away half-way through that speech. "Whatever. You're just a commoner so I suppose I can't expect anything special from you, but you can at least do laundry, right?"

_What?_ Naruto was getting tired of thinking that. "What do you mean, you can't expect anything special from me? I told you before, I'm awesome!"

Louise sighed and tried again, clearly wracking her mind for words of one syllable. "You're just a commoner. Since you can't do anything better, I'll have you wash my clothes."

"What? The hell I will! I don't do laundry!"

Louise sniffed pointedly. "I can tell."

"Screw you! We were camping out, there's no time to wash your clothes when you're training in the woods!" Naruto blinked. Now that he thought about it..."Hey, uh, speaking of that, where's the big white-haired guy who was with me? You can't miss him, he's really loud and obnoxious and he flirts with all the girls. I guess he'd leave you alone though..."

Louise's eye twitched, but all she said was "A mage can't have two familiars. I only summoned you."

There was that word again, 'familiar'. But at least he'd understood part of what she'd said this time. "Summoned? Like with a contract?"

Louise nodded firmly. "That's right. Our contract is complete, and you are bound to serve me until the day I die."

Naruto recoiled. "U-u-until you _die_?

She smirked at him. "Or until you do."

"What? That's bullshit! You can't just _decide_ something like that. Both people have to agree! I never accepted you!"

Unexpectedly, Louise blushed. "It was - " she cleared her throat " - it was the kiss that sealed it."

"What? I thought I was dreaming! That doesn't count!"

Louise sniffed. "Well, I'll have you know that a kiss with a mere familiar doesn't count either. Or with a commoner, for that matter. But most of all – "

Naruto didn't care about any 'most of all'. "Yeah, and what's with this 'commoner' crap? Just 'cause somebody gave your great-grandfather a title, you think you're special? No matter who you're related to, greatness only comes from your own strength! Believe it!"

"That's right" she nodded; Naruto's hopes sprang up.

And immediately crashed: "Nobles use magic. Our power makes us inherently superior to common folk like you."

"Magic? Like, what you did with the explosion, where we can talk to each other now?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, idiot, _magic_. I have it, you don't." Unexpectedly, she brandished her stick again. Naruto braced himself for another explosion, but nothing seemed to happen. She put the stick back in her pocket with a sigh. "Not even any normal familiar magic, apparently."

Naruto groaned; apparently ninja techniques didn't count for anything with her. But, "Normal familiar magic?"

"If you were a _real_ familiar, I could use my power to see through your eyes and hear through your ears. But I just tried it, and it was useless."

"Well I'm glad! That sounds creepy."

She ignored him. "And real familiars know how to find reagents for their masters. Have you ever even _seen_ a reagent?"

_What's a reagent?_ He managed to avoid saying it out loud, but apparently she picked up on it anyway. Or she could read minds – what a scary thought.

"And if I'm attacked, you must defend me with your life."

Naruto made a face. "Who'd want to defend _you_?"

She stiffened, and bit out "I doubt you could defeat even an owl or a cat!"

_I'm younger than you, and I'm already a strong ninja! I beat Haku! I fought in a war, and I did it without your fancy "magic"._ But he controlled himself. He had to stop reacting on impulse all the time, had to think ahead – wasn't Jiraiya always saying that? Jiraiya wasn't here, wherever "here" even was, but that just made it more important to follow his advice. He had to stop, and think, and come up with a plan.

But Louise wouldn't leave him alone! "I'll just have you wash my clothes, and serve my meals, and things. Even you should be able to do things like that."

Goaded, Naruto snapped back "And I'm supposed to just do that. For the rest of your life."

"Yes, exactly."

A little silence fell.

At last, Naruto shook his head. Slowly he circled around the bed in the middle of the room, walking toward her. "You know...I have a summoning contract too. With the toad sages of Myoboku Mountain. Just learning to use the summoning technique wasn't good enough – they didn't accept me even after I learned to summon their leader. He made me prove my strength by standing on his head for a full day! It doesn't just take," and here it was Naruto who had to clear his throat, "a kiss or whatever."

Louise snickered. "As if a commoner could ever summon anything! Anyway, you want me to sit on your head?" She brandished a riding crop that she'd been keeping somewhere. "For a familiar, you're pretty perverted."

"Not just that! I'm saying the summoned creature has to accept you, by their rules, before the contract is complete. And..." he leaped over her heard, toward the door, "I don't! See ya never, crazy girl!"

"GET BACK HERE, YOU STUPID DOG!"

But Naruto had already vanished down the hallway.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Sixty seconds into his daring escape, Naruto was hopelessly lost. All the hallways and rooms looked alike, none of them were lit very well, and the only signs were written in the blocky, angular characters of the local language. Louise's translation technique only went so far, it seemed.

Thinking back, he should have just jumped out the window, but he'd been mad. Hell, he was still mad! What gave _her_ the right to look down on him – to look down on anybody? Even if only Nobles had "magic", even if normal people couldn't learn to use it, that just meant they should use that power to _protect_ people! That was what ninja did!

Well, some ninja. The Leaf ninja, anyway. Most of the time. And when he was Hokage, it'd be _all_ the time! Believe it!

Whatever. Louise had pulled him here against his will; even if he _wanted_ to stay and show Louise just how wrong she was, he couldn't. He had to get back to Jiraiya. He'd just have to figure out how to un-summon himself (how did summoned creatures do it?). If he couldn't figure that out, he'd just walk – the Elemental Countries couldn't be _that_ far away.

But first, he had to get out of the castle.

No sooner had he resolved that than he heard voices in the hallway ahead. He didn't quite dare to double back. Louise was back there someplace, and though he'd managed to lose her for the moment, he could still hear her yelling in the distance. She had a _really_ piercing voice, even more than Sakura-chan.

The voices ahead, by contrast, were soft and unalarmed. If he could sneak past...he peeked around the corner.

He spotted a blond boy, and a dark-haired girl in a brown robe. She was giggling at something he'd said, and he was smiling at her as though all the worshipful adoration in her eyes were no more than his just reward. Despite himself, Naruto growled a little.

The girl looked up. "Guiche-sama, did you hear something?"

Naruto ducked back around the corner. _Damn it! If I'd just kept quiet...now sneaking past them is __going to be tricky._

But the blond boy just laughed. "No, no dear Katie, I heard nothing. When I am in your presence I hear only the sound of your laughter, I see only the depths of your eyes, and I smell only the scent of your hair."

The girl laughed, soft and richly. Other sounds followed. _Ugh, I can't believe she bought that cheesy line. _It was weird; no matter how stupid they sounded, lines like that always seemed to work – for Jiraiya, at least. And apparently this blond jackass too. But at least they were distracted now.

Naruto walked past, silent and unseen.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After a dozen more wrong turns into empty, purposeless rooms, Naruto found himself in a great hall. No, a Great Hall, with capital letters: tables as long as the whole Ninja Academy back home, hanging chandeliers, the works. _I knew this place was big, I've sure seen enough of it tonight, but I didn't think it could hold _this_ many people._

All things considered it was pretty interesting, and under normal circumstances Naruto would have loved to hang around and get a closer look. But right now, only one feature could hold his attention: the grand double doors at the far end of the hall. They were so huge and impressive that they _had_ to lead outside, and once he was outdoors he'd be home free! He remembered how to navigate by the stars, more or less, and he'd run all night if he had to!

Grinning with enthusiasm for his own plan, Naruto dashed toward the doors.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The great hall's doors burst open, and Old Osmond hurriedly straightened up from where he'd been leaning against the castle stonework. Even Tristain's mild spring nights were too chill for his old bones nowadays, but a good first impression would be vital. So Osmond ignored the pain in his joints, arranged his features into a look of surprised interest, and took his first real look at Uzumaki Naruto.

He was short – though his spiky hair made him seem taller. Beneath it, his blue eyes sparkled with purpose. Most interestingly of all, he had three slashed whisker marks on each cheek, putting Osmond in mind of a cat. Was he a shape-shifter? A member of some unknown race of animal people, summoned from across the great ocean? Such a fascinating familiar Louise had summoned!

Now to stop him from getting away...

"Hello, Mister Naruto," Old Osmond said to the boy, and turned the Smile on him.

In a long life filled with sophisticated magical achievements, the Smile was perhaps Osmond's greatest work. It conveyed a carefully-balanced mixture of wisdom, friendliness, experience, and naiveté. It said, "I am old and wise, friendly and useful, but not any sort of threat." He'd had many occasions to use it during his years as Headmaster, and it had always served him well.

It had no effect whatsoever on his secretary, but one couldn't have everything. Especially not at Osmond's age.

In any case, this "Naruto" was made of weaker stuff than Ms. Longueville; he melted visibly, and instead of darting off the way he clearly wanted to, he said "Uh, hi there. Listen, I'm sorry, but I kinda have to _run_..."

"Don't worry; Miss Vallière is searching beneath the servant's quarters right now. She thinks you've taken refuge in the stockrooms there."

The boy's face wrinkled up with irritation. On a more imposing figure that expression might have looked quite fierce, but on him it was merely cute. His response didn't help. "Awww, c'mon already! I _told_ her I was leaving!"

Osmond chuckled, rich and low. "Yes, you did, but Miss Vallière did not believe you. Not really. Despite everything she has her pride, as a mage and as a Noble, and she cannot let herself believe that her familiar might abandon her."

The boy swallowed. That _abandon_ had hit hard, Osmond could see, but Naruto persevered. "Hey, it's not like I asked to be summoned! And anyway, Louise said I'm supposed to do her laundry and stuff for my whole life, just because! Isn't that slavery? It's wrong!"

"You're right," Osmond agreed, and enjoyed the flicker of surprise that flowed over the boy's face. He pressed his advantage: "Your existence challenges much of what we mages thought we knew of the summoning ritual. Usually the ritual summons an ordinary animal – a bird or a cat, perhaps. An especially powerful mage might summon a dragon, or a gryphon, or some other mighty magical beast, but usually it's just an ordinary animal, conjured from somewhere in this world."

He gave Naruto a moment to process that. Just as the boy was opening his mouth to ask a question, he continued: "Usually it's a good thing – my cute Motsognir can't imagine life without me, nor I without him. Without his familiar rune he'd have an ordinary mouse's intelligence and lifespan, and he'd have died long ago. And that's not considering the other gifts that our relationship has granted us." He fixed Naruto with his second-most-intense stare. "For Louise to summon a someone like you as a familiar is completely unprecedented. I wonder what powers you'll develop together?"

Naruto lashed out with one hand, punching the castle wall in mute, angry denial. "Who cares about that? What's the use of having power if you're not around to protect the people who matter to you? You have to send me back!"

_Interesting. The word 'abandon' hurt him, even though he knew it wasn't just. But when I offered him power, he ignored it completely. _Aloud, he said: "The familiar ritual is one of our oldest spells. No one really understands how it works anymore. No one here can do what you're asking – probably no one anywhere can. After some research, we might – "

Naruto wasn't interested in research. "Fine, then I'll just walk! Even if it takes two years, I won't let that stop me!"

_How determined! And how like Louise, who demanded to be admitted to my school without even one success to her credit. But he's acting as though..._"Can it truly be that simple? What about your left hand?"

Looking baffled, Naruto held it up. He stared intently at his own palm for a moment, but it yielded up no secrets. At last, he looked back up at Osmond. "What about it?"

_He doesn't know? How can he not have – _None of those pained thoughts reached Osmond's face; all he said was "Turn it over. Look at the back."

Suspiciously, Naruto did so. For a moment his face registered simple shock, and then he _growled_, low in his throat. "_Damn_ it! _Another _seal?"

Quietly filing that "another" away for more thought later (not to mention that strange new word "seal"), Osmond said, "I'm afraid so. Those runes symbolize the bond between Master and Familiar. My adorable Motsognir bears a similar set." _Although, I've never seen runes quite like those. Have I? I'll have to look them up. Ahh,what a sorrow it is to be old..._

Then again, he _was_ Headmaster of the school. What were subordinates for, if not for taking care of tedious little jobs like that? _Now, who's annoyed me the most lately? Miss Chevreuse managed to blow up that classroom..._Osmond's happy musings were interrupted, yet again, by Naruto.

"Augh! Of course! Everything's about the frigging familiar ritual around here! But even so," and Naruto's voice had turned low and serious, "I won't let _this_ stop me either! No way! A seal's just a seal; it doesn't have to decide your whole life!" Panting, Naruto flung out his left arm, as if trying to physically cast away the familiar runes. "I told you before, the circumstances don't matter! I have to go back!"

One more gambit to try, then. Osmond shrugged, elaborately casual. "If your mind's that made up, I suppose there's nothing I can say. But before you go, would you join an old man in his stargazing for a few moments?" When Naruto hesitated, Osmond pressed shamelessly: "Miss Vallière is now lost in the stockrooms herself; it will be several minutes yet before she can join us."

"I guess so, then. But after that..."

Osmond nodded benignly. "Of course"

Naruto stepped through the doors of the great hall. He passed under the archway, and out of the roofed alcove that covered it. And for the first time since he'd arrived in this strange new place, Naruto looked up at the night sky.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

There were two moons.

_There were two moons._

Naruto's brain couldn't process it at first. There was just the moon, only way bigger and shinier than usual, and then this other big red round thing a little bit behind it, and it was round, and it was red, but it couldn't be a moon because there was no such thing as _a_ moon, there was just _the_ moon, just one of it, that was what the word meant!

But even after Naruto thought all that, and wiped his eyes, and boldly looked up again, there were still two moons in the sky.

Behind him, the old guy was saying something about lunar conjunctions and a periapsis, whatever that was. Naruto rounded on him. "What the hell, old man? What's that extra moon doing up there?"

"As far I as know, it's always been that way. Is it different where you come from?"

"_YES!_ We have _one_ moon, and it's not so big, and it's not so bright, and, and..." Naruto trailed off, panting. The implications were starting to sink in.

_This isn't just some other country, or even some other continent._

_No matter how far I walk, or swim, or even fly..._

"No! I won't accept it! Everyone said it was impossible for me to graduate from the Ninja Academy, and I did it! Everyone said I could never beat Neji, and I did it! Everyone thinks there's no way I can bring Sasuke back, but I'm going to do that too! I made a promise of a lifetime!"

The old man was nodding thoughtfully. "So you truly are from another world. I admit I suspected, but I wasn't sure until now."

"Yeah, well, that 'other world' is my home! I have to go back, it's where I belong!"

The robed wizard turned away, seeming to study the moon. Moons. "I expect you're right. But is it where you're needed?"

"Huh?" What was it with old men and saying weird things that didn't make any sense?

"Never mind, never mind; it was just an old man's fancy. But if I may ask: didn't you say you'd go home even if it took you two years?"

"That's right! I won't give up no matter _what_ it takes!"

The old man's face twitched, very briefly. It was an expression he'd seen on Old Man Hokage's face once or twice, and he'd never known what it meant then, either. In a patient voice, the old man spoke again: "In that case, may I ask you to remain with Miss Vallière for a few days?" Naruto drew an outraged breath, but the old man cut across him: "It will take time to figure out how to reverse the spell; perhaps several weeks. Until then, may I ask - "

Naruto's fury blossomed. "WEEKS? You want me to stay with that nasty, vicious – "

"You have two years, don't you? Have patience for now."

Now _that_ was so close to one of Jiraiya's lectures that it might have been a quote. _"Think of it as patience training, brat."_ That was exactly what he would have said. Damn it. But having to put up with that pink-haired crazy girl, for _weeks_? That went way beyond normal patience!

But the old man seemed to be reading his mind. Still smiling, he said "She might not have made a good first impression, but Louise is a kind girl at heart. The full story isn't mine to tell, but I can say this much: she wants more than anything to impress everyone with her amazing summoning. When you ran away from her, she began to fear that she'd failed."

_Put like that...I really have no choice._ Naruto sighed. "It's not that I don't want to help, it's just – I made a promise, you know?" _Sakura, Jiraiya, Sasuke,even Tsunade – they're my precious people now. I can't abandon them!_

The old man nodded, scratching his chin beneath his long beard. "I understand. It will require study, but this is a school of magic; I'm sure we can find a way to return you to your home. Until then, will you stay beside Miss Vallière?"

Naruto took a breath. Let it out slowly. Drew in another, and used it to say, "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

As soon as he said it, something inside Naruto relaxed, some unspecified ineffable thing that he hadn't even realized was tense until that moment. He didn't stop to question it; Naruto was never one to think too hard about his own feelings. And anyway, it wasn't so strange; he was always at his best when he had a concrete plan to follow, or enemy to fight. Not knowing what to do was his worst enemy, but now he had a plan: sit still and wait for the old man to figure everything out. Sure, it wasn't as active as his normal plans, but he'd promised to do it, and he'd never go back on his word.

Reassured, Naruto waved to the nice old man, turned about, and walked willingly into Tristain Magic Academy.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Behind Naruto's back, Osmond slipped his wand back into his robes. He'd only planned to use a simple Sleeping spell, but even so he was glad not to do it. He'd never fought in a war – hardly ever fought at all, if he could avoid it – and sneak attacks always left him a little heartsick.

The lies he'd told, on the other hand, didn't bother him at all.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Naruto found her in the wine cellar, just as the old man had said. She'd stopped yelling by then, choosing instead to prowl up and down the long aisles in infuriated silence. When she saw him, her expression hardened. He tried a smile.

"Heya. Listen, about before - "

"So you've given up on escape?"

Technically that was true, but hearing it put like that..."It's just that everything's so _weird_. You've got these screwy names, and you all dress funny - and there are two moons! Why the hell are there two moons?"

"Of course there are two. What does that have to do with anything? Honestly, what did I do to deserve – "

"This isn't my world!"

That stopped her cold.

"You didn't just summon me from another country, or across the ocean, or anything like that. It's a whole different reality! Where I'm from there's just _one _moon, and it's a lot smaller than either of yours! And we don't have "magic" or "nobles" or whatever, we have chakra and ninjas instead! And I'm a totally kick-ass ninja! So even if I don't know what a reagent is, you can't take me lightly! Believe it!"

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Louise's mind was whirling.

Her familiar had run away..._bad_.

Her familiar had come back..._good_.

Her familiar came from so far away that he didn't even know the most basic, ordinary things..._bad_.

Her familiar had some kind of power, despite his mundane looks..._good_? That, at least, she could do something about. So right there in the wine cellar, sitting on a stool and with her back to wine cask, Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière commanded her familiar to talk.

She'd finally found an order he didn't have any problem obeying.

Naruto would, she quickly learned, happily talk _forever_ on any subject that entered his mind. The hard part was to keep him focused on ninja magic instead of ramen or arrogant bastards or 'pervert toad hermits' (?). Even when he was on-subject his explanations weren't very clear; he'd go on talking as long as she let him but he never remembered to explain basic things like "you don't need a wand to use ninja spells". Still, after half an hour of careful questioning she thought she was starting to get the idea.

Ninja had spells, only they called them "techniques". Instead of incantations made of words, they used sequences of hand gestures. Ninjas were limited in the number of techniques they could cast before they had to rest, but the limiting resource was called 'chakra' instead of willpower, and it involved the body somehow; Naruto had gotten pretty vague when she'd asked for details about that.

Ninja-ness wasn't inherited or innate, like nobility or magic. It was a profession that you had to study for, like...being a blacksmith, or something. Or, better example, like being a knight; once you finished your training, Naruto said, you spent your time searching for the enemies of your country and "getting into crazy fights". Or maybe walking dogs and gardening; Naruto had been vague about _that_, too – something to do with a 'pervert scarecrow'? For her own sanity's sake, Louise had changed the subject.

Strangest of all, a typical ninja only learned a few techniques in his lifetime. Louise had known a dozen simple spells before she'd even entered the Academy (or the theory behind them, anyway); a strong ninja might learn that many techniques in his whole _life_.

But those few spells could be shockingly powerful.

Transformation – a flawless, full-body disguise that could be used to imitate anyone the caster had ever seen, or could imagine.

Replacement – switching positions with a nearby object, so quickly that it looked like teleportation.

Shadow Clone – his most astonishing technique of all. It produced half a dozen perfect copies of the caster, all of whom could fight, think, or use other spells – _techniques_, she reminded herself – with complete freedom, their power limited only by the amount of _chakra_ their creator had given them. Naruto claimed to have created one hundred such clones at once, but Louise was already learning to tune out his ridiculous boasts. From the way he was leaning against the wine casks at the end of the demonstration, and the grateful sigh with which he accepted their energy when they dispersed, it was clear that his limit was more like six. Maybe eight, after he'd had some sleep.

Such a strange set of powers. She'd still have preferred something more obviously impressive – a dragon, maybe – but she supposed that all his weird, sneaky magic could be useful in its own way. He was definitely better than a cat or a raven, anyway, though for some weird reason he _scowled_ when she told him so. Having such an ignorant and mannerless creature for a familiar was going to be very tiresome, she could already tell.

While she was thinking that, Naruto yawned; an enormous jaw-cracking thing that gave her a great view of his tonsils, not that she'd wanted to see them. Her familiar was so _crude_, and _unrefined_, and – she caught herself yawning too, albeit with far more dignity. It had been late when they'd started; now it was long past time for a proper young Noble and her familiar to go to bed.

Which ran her head-long into another problem: where was _he_ going to sleep?

Her half-formed plan to scrounge him some straw from the stables wouldn't do at all, she could see that now. With his ninja spells he was sort of like a Noble, Louise reasoned, and besides that, his treatment as her familiar reflected on her, didn't it? A mage who summoned a dragon wouldn't let some ignorant stablehand put it in a pigsty. That being so...

"Hey, Louise-san, are you ok? You look kinda - "

"You'll be sleeping in my bed tonight."

The boy's stupid-looking face twisted up in shock and confusion. Flushing, Louise rushed to explain herself: "Don't get the wrong idea! You need a place to sleep, and I won't let my familiar sleep in the dirt like a pig! That's all!"

Naruto practically melted with embarrassed relief. Momentarily bereft of direction, his tongue went off on its own. "Oh! Right, of course! Ahahahaha! Not that I thought you meant anything else, but I just – I was surprised – but it – of course!"

_Hmph. You don't have to be _that_ relieved about it_, Louise thought_. _"It's just for tonight. Tomorrow morning I have the day off, so we'll make better arrangements then. Don't get any ideas."

"I would never! I'm not some pervert!"

Louise nodded. _Really that remains to be seen, but..._"Then come along; it's time for bed."

Naruto yawned again, looking sheepish. "Guess I can't argue with that." Louise nodded, rose, and headed for the stairs that led back to female students' wing. And for the first time in their new, shared life, her familiar followed her.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

_Six hours ago, the Listener had risen screaming from her trance. Ignoring her minders, she'd turned unseeing eyes on the tent at the center of their encampment. Trying to walk she'd managed only a lurching crawl, but it didn't matter; the spirits of the earth felt her need, and lifted the Chief's tent – with the Chief still inside – and set it down around her._

_They'd been cloistered together, talking, ever since._

_The subject was easy to guess. They'd all felt the wave of satanic power from the West, seen the heartfires blaze and die away. They'd seen the tiny bodies of Riluar's speaking songbirds, lying bright-breasted beneath their tree in an obscene parody of autumn. And so the elves of Sathial's Watch set down their tasks and gathered outside their Chief's tent, waiting for her to call upon them for the action that would inevitably follow._

_The demons of the West could no longer be ignored._


	2. Chapter 2

When Naruto woke up the next morning, he was still in Tristain. He was still lying in that ridiculous bed-with-a-roof, and the pink-haired girl, Louise, was still sleeping a few feet away, snoring delicately.

He hadn't really expected anything else, but some part of him had hoped that the whole thing was a long, weird dream, or an elaborate revenge prank by Jiraiya, or something. But no, it was all real, and if he ever doubted it he could just look at the seals on his left hand.

The _runes_, the old wizard had called them.

Naruto lay on the bed Louise had shared with him, regarding the strange, angular characters with a sense of nameless dread. He'd had seals put on him before; the Fourth Hokage had bound an unkillable demon into his gut when he was a baby, and just like that, two days in, his whole life had been ruined. The snake sage Orochimaru had put a seal on Sasuke that had lured him away in search of terrible power, just as they'd started to become friends.

What would this seal do?

Naruto rubbed the back of his left hand, scratching an imaginary itch. You could see the runes, but you couldn't feel them. They were like seals that way, too.

But, hey, it wasn't like it was forever, right? A couple of days, maybe a week, and the old man would take the seal off and he'd get to go home. All he had to do was stay out of trouble until then.

Piece of cake!

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Guiche de Gramont was having a good day.

Granted, every day was a good day when you were a handsome, talented scion of the house of Gramont. But even though he'd just woken up, Guiche could tell that _this_ day was going to be special. The sun was shining, his magic was overflowing, and that lovely first-year Katie had started to appreciate his elegance. _"I see only the depths of your eyes"...that was good. I'll have to remember that line, to use on Montmorencey later._

Yes sir, everything was turning up Guiche.

In honor of the occasion, Guiche laid out one of his flashier outfits. Tristain Magic Academy technically had a dress code, a white shirt and dark blue pants or skirt, but that still left plenty of wiggle room for people who really cared about themselves. Almost nothing went with the dull black of the second-year student's robe, it was as though their teachers had _designed_ it to be as unflattering as possible, but the contrast with the lighter-colored pants let the cloak a certain austerity, Guiche fancied. The shirt was easier; Guiche's had a set of intricate ruffles down the front (drawing attention to the v-neck collar that showed off his manly chest) and another at the wrists (to add weight to his gestures, and serve as a setting for his wand).

It was hard to put it on by himself without creasing the ruffles, but Guiche managed; the third son of a military house like Gramont couldn't expect to have servants around all the time. After all, the Gramonts were a family of warrior mages; enduring hardship without servants was good practice for the battlefield.

They couldn't afford any, either, but Guiche had been ignoring that thought for years. It hardly pained him at all, anymore.

Smiling to himself, Guiche picked up his wand and put the finishing touches on his appearance. The really advanced cosmetic spells were all Air and Water-based, incompatible with his Earth nature, but you could get a long way with just the basics and there was more to life as a mage than just class and elemental affinity. Guiche had always had a gift for aesthetic magic, and so moments later his hair was properly styled and his smile positively sparkled. He cast a soulful look at his mirror, then couldn't help but grin at the results. _Perfect_.

_As always._

And as always, Guiche was late to breakfast. That wasn't a problem: there was always plenty of food, the servants would feed you as long as you showed up at least vaguely on time, and every morning there was a moment, after he opened the door, when every eye in the room turned to him.

_A rose blooms for the pleasure of all. Could there be any better way to start the day?_

But when Guiche flung open the Great Hall's side door that morning, no one looked. Not even one little first-year. Instead, everyone was watching...

_God and the Founder_, Guiche thought. _That's Louise's commoner._

He'd seen the poor boy the other day, of course, and wondered a little what she'd given him to make him go along with her charade. But he'd already summoned his beautiful Verdanthi by then, and hadn't really cared what kind of ridiculous failure the Zero had produced.

Certainly he hadn't expected to see the guy again.

At _his_ breakfast table.

Stealing _his_ admirers.

(None of them looked very admiring – they tended toward "shocked that a commoner had the nerve to sit with them" or "repulsed by his appalling table manners", but that wasn't the point. Guiche had made a dramatic entrance, and this _peasant_ had had the nerve to spoil it)

So Guiche put on his very best superior smirk, the one he saved for duels and romantic rivals, and stalked toward Louise's table.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Naruto had thought he'd seen the Academy's dining hall already. Big room, chandeliers, tables, statues, huge double doors – pretty darn cool, all in all. Now, seen it as it was meant to be seen, tables loaded with food and chairs filled with students, it wasn't cool at all.

It was _spectacular_.

Trailing behind Louise, Naruto was stuck looking in every direction at once, trying not to twist his own neck off in his excitement. _Isn't there a bloodline technique that lets people twist their bones __around however they want? How come I got stuck with a demon fox, instead of something useful like that?_ It was just so much to take in!

Armored statues lined the walls. The tables and chairs that Naruto'd thought he'd seen last night glowed richly in the morning sun. And then someone had covered those tables with candles, and silverware, and weird flat cakes. _And then_, in a totally unnecessary cap to all that opulence, someone had actually _polished the floor_; when Naruto bent down to peer at the checkered light-and-dark pattern of the tile, he could see the outline of his own face looking back at him.

But Louise didn't care at all!_ She_ sure wasn't going to kneel down and look at herself in polished marble; she ignored all the amazing decorations completely. So he was forced to scurry along after her – but then again that maybe wasn't so bad. That way, he got to the food faster!

It was pretty weird-looking, but he had to admit it smelled good. Round flat cakes in a sweet-smelling sauce, with yellow-fleshed fruit in little bowls beside each plate. When Louise finally found a place she liked, at a mostly-empty table on the far side of the room, Naruto wasted no time: he plopped down beside her, cross-legged in their huge high-backed chairs, and popped one of the bits of fruit into his mouth.

It tasted as good as it smelled! Naruto let out a little sigh of ecstasy, almost oblivious to the other students sitting down near him. He reached out for another piece, but Louise slapped his hand away! He turned to her, outraged, and she said, "What do you think you're doing?"

Naruto opened his mouth for an angry retort...and stopped. _You promised you'd be patient, remember?_ Stupid brain, always making him do stuff he didn't want to do. But he _had_ promised, so all he said was, "What's wrong?"

Strangely, the question seemed to throw her for a loop; her mouth worked, but no sound came out. Finally, she settled on, "Before each meal, we say a prayer of thanks to God and to Founder Brimir. To eat before we say that prayer is rude." She paused, then added less certainly, "and sacrilegious."

Naruto blinked. It seemed impossible, but looking around he could see that it was true: everyone in the room, from the people next to him to the adults at the head table, was just sitting quietly and _looking_ at their food instead of eating it!

Naruto sighed. "Why'd I have to get summoned to such a weird world, huh?"

Louise matched him sigh for sigh. "Why did _I_ have to summon a familiar who doesn't even understand simple things?"

_Be patient..._

Before the silence that followed could stretch itself out too much, an ornately robed man at the head table rose to lead the hall in prayer.

Naruto didn't join in; he didn't know the words, and anyway he wasn't sure he liked it. _'We give thanks for this humble breakfast'? This breakfast isn't humble at all, it's great! If I were this Brimir guy, I'd be pretty offended._ Naruto craned his neck, trying to discreetly look for a noble-looking pissed-off guy, but everyone looked properly humble and grateful. _Maybe he's not here?_

Anyway the prayer was over now, so he started to reach for another – Louise slapped his hand again! He was still being patient, so he _quietly_ yelled, "Ow! Seriously, what the hell?"

"A gentleman never eats with his fingers, he uses his fork and knife. Like this." She picked up the little three-tined spear beside her plate and expertly skewered a piece of fruit. Then she chomped it right down. _I guess it's one of her favorites, too._

"There, you see?" Naruto nodded. It _was_ simple, you just had to see it done. The other academy kids were watching him learn with with ill-concealed interest. Some weren't even bothering to hide their superior smiles.

_Be patient, be patient, be patient..._

So Naruto reached for his fork...and Louise slapped his hand away _again_!

"_Now_ what!"

"This dining hall is restricted to the nobility. You aren't allowed to eat here!"

"I have chakra! That's not so different!"

"It's about breeding and refinement! Really, you shouldn't even have sat down."

"You couldn't have said that _first_?"

"I didn't think of it!"

"Louiiiise! That isn't fair! C'mon, noble or not I need to eat, right?"

The other students were watching them even more openly now; one blond girl laughed out loud. Louise didn't like it any more than he did, apparently; she bit her lip, and finally said, "Just this once, I'll allow it as a special favor! Understand?"

_..._

Naruto forced a laugh. "Well, as long as I get fed somehow I guess it's ok." Louise just nodded composedly, as though that were perfectly reasonable.

Even so, Naruto kept his hands clasped in his lap for a moment. _Any more interruptions? No? Good._ Louise had already turned away, both hands busy cutting the round cakes. The other students had returned to their meals. With a sigh of relief, Naruto reached for his little food-spear...

...when a new voice cut in from behind him.

"Boorish. Crude. Powerless. A fitting familiar for Louise the Zero."

Naruto sighed; at least it wasn't Louise this time. He fought down the urge to swallow all the fruit in one gulp just because, and turned to meet the new obstacle between him and his breakfast.

Blond hair, blue eyes, ridiculous ruffled shirt, obnoxious smirking mouth. For a moment he couldn't place him, and then: "Hey! You're that smarmy creep who was messing around with that brown-haired girl last night!"

The smirk vanished; the blue eyes widened in shock. "What! You couldn't possibly have seen that!"

Naruto snickered. "I wish I hadn't!" He switched to a girly falsetto. "What was that? Did you hear something?" He pitched his voice a little lower, but not much. "Don't worry, sweet Katie, I only see your eyes and hear your voice." Naruto shuddered, and mimed vomiting onto his breakfast plate.

A laugh ran through the watching students. And they were all watching – no one was even pretending to pay attention to their breakfasts anymore. But one in particular, the blond girl who'd laughed at him earlier, wasn't amused. She stood, and said in a trembling voice,

"You said – you said you'd be _my _Guiche. You said – always – faith..."

Words failed her. She reached across the table, but her target very sensibly stepped backward, out of reach. Thwarted, she slapped the table instead.

"You philandering idiot! I _hate_ you!"

She snarled, or maybe sobbed, and threw herself through one of the side doors.

The blond boy didn't follow. He turned away from his fleeing probably-not-girlfriend-anymore, brandished a rose (!) in Naruto's face, and said "Know this, peasant. My name is Guiche de Gramont, third son of the house of Gramont. For slandering my honor, and bringing tears to the eyes of my dear Montmorencey, I challenge you...to a duel!"

Naruto's breath caught.

Jiraiya hadn't sparred with him for _days_; they'd been focusing on "stealth", and "restraint", and "self-control", and other crap like that. And his last _real_ fight, with some Rain country jerk, had been a _month_ ago. And technically, he'd only promised to be patient with _Louise_, right? So Naruto turned to the girl who'd summoned him, eyes shining.

"Is he right? Do they really have duels here? You can just get into a fight, whenever you want?"

Louise cleared her throat uncertainly. "Not – there are rules. You need witnesses, and you have to stop the fight at first blood, you're not allowed to – "

"Yeah yeah yeah, no killing, no maiming, I got it. That's how we do it at home, too."

"It's more than that! Nobles can't challenge each other at all, and even commoners need special circumstances first! I don't think familiars have standing to make challenges at all – "

"_I'm_ the one challenging _him_," Guiche put in peevishly. Naruto accepted that with a nod, and gave Louise a wide grin and double thumbs-up.

"There, you see? Totally legit!"

But for some weird reason, Louise didn't look like she found Naruto's complete mastery of the rules of dueling very reassuring. She grabbed his shirtfront and pulled his ear down toward her mouth, whispering, "Look, idiot, I know he doesn't look like much, but Guiche is really skilled! You're still weak from the summoning, right? You should back down and apologize, before this gets any worse!"

Now _that_ was just too much. Naruto pulled back, and pitched his voice so that the whole hall could hear him. "Apologize? To this wimpy girly-boy? Forget it! Don't worry about a thing, Louise! I'll end this with one punch!"

Louise slumped in her seat, her face in her hands. "Moron!"

Naruto hardly noticed the insult; he was too excited. _Finally, some action!_ _Although, these guys don't train for war like ninja kids do – how strong could he really be?_ More than anything, in that moment, Naruto wanted to find out.

Guiche seemed to agree; his smile had grown wide and anticipatory. "If that's the way you feel, shall we have our fight right now?"

Naruto blinked. "What, you mean here? Like, on one of the tables or something?"

Guiche and Louise shared a weirdly understanding look. _What did I miss?_ Naruto couldn't bear to ask out loud, so he just grinned and sat back against the table. Finally Guiche spoke: "Follow me, I'll show you to the Vestri Court. It's where duels between students were fought, in the old days."

_That's more like it!_ "Just lead the way!"

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Unnoticed by either party, or by the dozens of fascinated spectators, Professor Jean Colbert slipped from Academy dining hall.

The Vestri Court had seen many duels in its three hundred and thirty-eight years. In the bad old days it had hosted several duels a day – back then, the students' right to kill each other over imagined insults had been part of the foundation of Tristainian legal tradition. But after Pope Clement IV banned the practice, the highly-religious nation of Tristain quickly followed suit, and duels between Nobles – between students in particular – were strictly forbidden.

One could outlaw breathing with about as much success, but at least the little monsters had to conceal themselves now. Almost no one died for it, anymore; perhaps that was enough.

Miss Vallière's strange new familiar wasn't a Noble, so one could argue that the old prohibition didn't apply. Looked at that way, nothing inappropriate was about to happen, and de Gramont wasn't an entitled little shit for yelling his intentions at the top of his voice during breakfast.

One could also argue that Guiche de Gramont _was _an entitled little shit who'd fought more illicit duels than anyone else in the school, for all that he'd only been there a year and a half. Then one might also say that this "Naruto" almost certainly had bizarre, unprecedented powers, and that it probably wasn't a good idea to bait him into using them while surrounded by a crowd of Tristain's future leaders.

_If that evil power we felt yesterday wasn't just a fluke of the summoning...If he uses _that_...my innocent students could all be killed._

Well, innocent-ish students. Professor Colbert had been teaching at Tristain Magic Academy for twenty-one years, and knew better than to think of them as paragons of Noble virtue. But he, who had been stupider and done worse than any of them, could scarcely complain.

And he, who hated conflict and violence more than anyone at the school, couldn't break it up himself.

Cursing the follies of all young people, Professor Colbert raced for the Headmaster's office.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The Vestri court formed a strangely enclosed space, set in the fields between the outer walls that marked the Academy grounds and the inner walls that made up the Academy itself. A few windows overlooked it, high on the Academy walls, but some quirk of building geometry left it isolated from the rest of the fields that surrounded the inner Academy.

It now held every student in the Academy, and more than a few servants.

Those few students who hadn't been at breakfast soon heard it from their fellows: come quickly! There's a duel being fought, and the teachers know about it, and they're allowing it!

And as if that weren't enough, one of the fighters was Guiche de Gramont, who'd never lost a fight in all his time as a student. And who, depending on whom you asked, was either a handsome, charming exemplar of all the greatest virtues of Nobility, or a cowardly, two-timing pretty boy who would come to a bad end.

And as if _that_ weren't enough, his opponent was Louise the Zero's strange new familiar.The one who appeared in an explosion (_well, that isn't so strange for Louise_). The one with the terrible table manners (_I heard Louise just found a commoner and paid him off, so that's why_). The one who Julia said Grammarche saw Colbert and Osmond whispering about before breakfast _(what if she really summoned him, huh? What then?)._

So the word spread, by mouth and by runner and by Whispering Wind, for those few who could cast it. Lacking those better options, Kirche von Zerbst had dashed for Tabitha's bedroom (which was, as always, warded against noise). Even her reclusive friend, who preferred to dine alone after everyone else had left, wouldn't want to miss this! And she'd been right; Tabitha had looked up from her book, nodded once, and stepped out her window.

(Tabitha's element was Air, and if she miscast her Levitation spell then her wind dragon familiar, Sylphid, was sure to catch her. As always, that offhanded display of power left Kirche impressed; lots of students knew _how _to cast Levitation, but very few had the Willpower necessary to use it that casually.)

(The servants, meanwhile, spread information in their own way, and faster than the magic-using Nobles could hope to match. For all their power, the Noble students were still just children; fifty years' experience does count for something.)

Together, this mob formed a loose ring, forty feet across and centered on the two blond boys. The one they knew – Guiche de Gramont, strongest of the second year and maybe of the whole student body – was murmuring something to his opponent. That opponent was nodding, shifting from foot to foot, running his hand through his spiky hair, and generally looking bored.

_This_ was Guiche's opponent, the mysterious new familiar? _Well_, the students began to say to one another, _there's a reason they call her the Zero._

And: _Well_, the servants began to say to one another, _appearances can be deceiving._

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Naruto loved moments like this. Surrounded by a crowd, every eye on him, about to kick the ass of a guy who really, _really_ deserved it – it was everything he'd dreamed of when he decided to become a ninja. Every sense felt sharper as his too-complex life faded into the background, and he could just focus on one thing: winning. Even his headache was easing off a little.

The ass-kickee of the day, Guiche Gummond or something like that (Naruto hadn't really been listening) was explaining all the local rules for dueling. Was _still_ explaining. _Still_ explaining. Naruto recited his new mantra to himself, _be patient be patient be _, but finally he couldn't take it anymore:

"Damn it, you said that part already! I get it, I get it: don't hurt the bystanders, don't kill your opponent, accept it if they yield! See? I understand, so let's just fight already!"

But Guiche only smiled. "It would be unkind to start before everyone else is ready. The whole school wants to see this duel. Don't you think we should oblige them?"

Naruto's frown deepened. "So, what, you're just stalling?"

Guiche nodded. "Exactly. This is the first legal duel to be held in our fair Academy for years. I'm sure everyone's looking forward to seeing one for the first time." He winked at Naruto, _actually winked_, and then added "Especially since _I've_ never fought before."

Naruto's frown deepened still further. "What do you care?"

"It's as true in warfare as it is in love: a rose blooms for the pleasure of all. But," he added, just as Naruto was opening his mouth to make fun of the _extreme cheesiness_ of that line, "I think everyone's arrived. Turn, walk five paces, then turn back, and the performance will begin."

_Performance? _But all Naruto said was, "Finally."

They turned, walked, and turned again. The crowd, sensing that the action was about to start, exploded into cheers.

For his _opponent_, of course.

"Yeah!"

"Go Guiche!"

"Show that commoner the power of a Noble!"

Naruto put up his fists. "Ready?"

The blond asshole just smiled. "Of course."

"Then here I come!"

Naruto leaped forward, fist cocked back. _He's probably not that fast, so if I take him out before he can cast a spell..._

Guiche flicked his rose wand lazily. Naruto's fist snapped forward...

...and slammed into the bronze golem that had suddenly sprung up between them.

"OWWWW! OW OW OW!" Naruto danced from foot to foot, clutching his hand. The Valkyrie before him stood stoically: seven feet tall, etched with stylized armor, and holding a long bronze lance. Behind it, Guiche smirked with triumph.

"We're magic users, so of course we fight with magic. What were you expecting?"

A little ripple of laughter ran through the crowd.

_I knew that, damn it._

"Do you get it now? No matter how strong you are, you're still a commoner. No matter how fast you are, you're still far below me. Give up and apologize, and we can stop this now."

Naruto flexed his hand, wincing. "Like hell. Since this is another world I guess I can forgive you for not knowing, but I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and I don't go back on my word. That's my way of the ninja!" Naruto struck his favorite pose, one fist extended in a thumb's up.

Guiche wasn't impressed. "The powerless can say anything they like. It won't change a thing."

"Those're pretty big words from a guy who still plays with dolls."

Guiche frowned, and his giant bronze puppet rushed forward.

It was fast; Naruto could barely avoid its attacks. It was strong; each punch split the earth and threw up clouds of dust. Worst of all, Guiche clearly knew how to use it: Naruto couldn't seem to lure it far enough out to rush past it and finish Guiche directly. That was the standard way to beat a puppeteer or a summoner, and stupid and arrogant as that smirking jackass might be, he clearly knew it.

"Don't get me wrong," Naruto panted, between dodges, "it's a _nice_ puppet. Back home we mostly make them out of wood, but metal's a good choice. I expected it to be really slow and clumsy, but the joints flow just like magic."

Behind him, he could hear Louise grumbling "Yeah, because it _is_ magic, you idiot." At least she wasn't telling him to give up anymore.

Naruto ignored her, and rubbed his knuckles in memory. "It's pretty tough, too. But is this really all you can do?"

Guiche had recovered his composure, and was smirking again. "Do I need anything else? Jumping about like an acrobat, waving your fists around – that sort of thing might be impressive in the circus, but against a Noble, it's useless. My beloved Valkyrie is just too much for you." As if to emphasize his point, Guiche's Valkyrie charged.

"Nobles and commoners, nobles and commoners!" Naruto shook his head, and incidentally cartwheeled away from an earth-shaking kick. "That's all you guys ever talk about! I'll tell you what I told Louise..." he drove for an opening between the golem's legs, but it drove him away with its lance "...power isn't an excuse to act superior! You have to use your strength to protect people, or what's the point?"

Naruto nodded to himself – that had sounded pretty cool. Sure, maybe he'd stolen that last line from the pervy sage, but it wasn't like anyone would ever find out.

But however cool his speech had sounded, it hadn't worked; Guiche still stood unmoved. "That's easy to say when you're weak. I admire your determination, but without the strength to back up your words, it's meaningless. You'd do better to accept your station in life."

_Even my most inspiring speech didn't do anything_. It was a drag, but honestly, Naruto was used to that. _Neji, Gaara, even Haku – none of them ever listened _It was a rule of life, as far as Naruto was concerned: if you wanted to really get a fighter's attention, you had to kick his ass a little first.

The only trouble with that was, he couldn't figure out _how._ Guiche's puppet was strong, fast, and way too tough for him to beat down with just his fists, not feeling the way he did, anyway. With enough shadow clones he could probably get past it to its master, but then what _else_ would Guiche pull out? No, he had to _destroy_ the Valkyrie, and that meant...

He hadn't wanted to try it. His body was still too weak, and his chakra felt...off, somehow. Kinda fizzy, not that that made any sense. But he couldn't lose to a womanizing jerk, right? He nodded to himself decisively, leaped backward to the edge of the circle, and began.

"First, the setup. Shadow Clone!" Naruto put his hands together into his favorite cross seal, and a picture-perfect copy of himself sprang into existence to his left.

Guiche flinched, but his voice was still cool. "Even two circus clowns won't - " but Naruto wasn't finished. Naruto reached out to his clone, his clone reached back, and something started to glow between their two hands. At first it was just a point of light, but it grew quickly into a sphere of swirling energy the size of Naruto's fist.

Openly worried now, Guiche gestured with his wand. The Valkyrie rushed forward, but it was already too late. With a yell, both Narutos sprang forward and smashed the ball of power into the golem's chest.

The sound came first, a terrible screeching wail that seemed to bypass the ears and stab directly into the brain. Naruto ignored it, just like he ignored the wave of exhaustion, and held his position. The Valkyrie had stopped moving, and now it was shuddering in painful, irregular jerks.

_Got it! But the way it's twitching, it looks like it's gonna – _he jumped clear, just barely in time, as Guiche's golem exploded.

Naruto landed heavily, and almost fell, but by then no one was watching _him_. By the time the dust had settled he had his breath back, with a little time left over to take a cool, casual pose. _Like Sasuke would have done. _ His clone wasn't bothering to keep up a front, and just knelt exhaustedly by his side.

_Weird. It wore me out, but I'd swear that felt _easier_ than usual._ Trying not to look as though he was about to fall over, Naruto surveyed his handiwork.

The mighty Valkyrie had been reduced to wreckage, gleaming metal twisted into unnatural shapes and strewn haphazardly across the dueling circle. The head and legs were almost intact, but the torso was simply _gone_, torn into tortured chunks the size of Naruto's fist.

The crowd had gone utterly silent.

"It's called _Rasengan._ I mold my chakra into two opposing forces, and swirl them together in a counter-rotation. Anything it hits is torn apart from the inside."

Guiche's eyes were wide. "I – Impossible!"

Naruto let his clone disperse, gratefully accepting the rush of unexpended energy. "There are guys from my world who can take one of those and get right up. Hardly even slows them down. Power like you can't even imagine."

Naruto smiled, just a little. "And even those guys call me a monster. Want to see why?"

Naruto drew a calming breath. What he was about to try was dangerous, but he was tired of being pushed around. _Ok, bastard fox, let's show off a little._ He centered himself as Jiraiya had taught him, placed a hand on the seal and called to the center of his being, reaching for the incredible power of the nine-tailed demon fox.

There was a pause in the duelist's circle.

Finally, Guiche broke the silence. "Was something supposed to happen?"

Naruto sighed. _Fine, be stubborn, whatever. I don't need your power anyway. _"Forget it, it's not important. I broke your doll, so the match is over, right? Or do you want to try to fight hand to hand?"

Guiche relaxed. "You had me worried for a moment. I apologize for what I said before – you're clearly not just a commoner. But you're still taking Guiche the Bronze too lightly." He flicked his rose wand, and more rose petals glowed and floated off of it. _Six_ more bronze golems sprang up from the ground.

Naruto facepalmed.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Osmond worked hard. He was in charge of a school-full of arrogant little lordlings, all of whom had the power to reduce one another to jam. Not even on purpose, necessarily, as Louise's colorful school career had showed. On top of that, the Academy was home to a host of powerful and curious magical artifacts, all of which had to be carefully secured. On top of _that_, his beautiful secretary would beat him brutally every time he tried to enjoy her abundant charms – even from a distance! All of that, Osmond felt, entitled him to a little petty revenge when one of his teachers burst in on one of his daydreams with a bunch of panicky demands. So when Jean Colbert had demanded – _demanded!_ – that Osmond use the Bell of Sleep to stop Miss Vallière's new familiar from fighting, he'd said:

"Let them fight. What's the worst that could happen?"

His subordinate's scream of inarticulate horror made up for everything. _You're never too old to __believe in jinxes, right, Jean?_

(He'd called for the Bell of Sleep anyway, he wasn't an idiot, but he didn't expect to need it. Naruto himself was perfectly harmless, and what was "evil power" anyway? Osmond hadn't felt anything.)

Now, what felt like the whole faculty was gathered around Osmond's scrying sensor, watching Louise's young familiar jump around the dueling ring. It hardly counted as a real duel, in Osmond's opinion, with neither side using any distance attacks. But it certainly _looked_ impressive.

_But what am I looking at, really? If only I had an expert to consult..._

He chuckled evilly, breaking his faculty's fascinated silence. "Nothing too extraordinary so far, I don't think. No evil power, no wide-ranging destruction. But I'm no judge, not really. What you think, ah, Jean?"

The look he got back was complex: surprise, annoyance, and a little fear. Which was fair; to ask that question at all pressed the limits of their old agreement, never mind the crowd of witnesses. But young Jean was the one who'd turned this into a spectacle for the faculty, and anyway, Osmond really did need an expert opinion. So he waited, smiling, until Jean's will broke and he began.

"His use of the Uneven Distribution is insane, beyond anything I've ever heard of. Even Knight-Captain Wardes never fights with more than three duplicates at once." He flushed, and added, "Or so I've heard." He hurried to continue: "His wind reinforcement is good too; see how high he can jump? But it seems that's all he has."

Given tacit permission by their Headmaster, the faculty began to spectate:

"I see what you mean. One good Flowing Vortex, or even just a Wind Hammer, and that'd be it for Guiche."

"Can you imagine what it would be like if it were Kirche fighting him? Or Tabitha?"

"I wish she would. Put the little snot in his place for once. _'Strongest of the students'_, my left – "

That was too much, even if Osmond privately agreed. But before he could issue a reprimand, Jean refocused their attention:

"Everyone, look! The familiar's figured it out!"

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

_I hate puppeteers so much._

Naruto had never fought a puppeteer before, but he was starting to despise the whole discipline in a really deep, personal way. It wasn't that his opponent got to control a whole army by himself – Naruto did that too, it was the centerpiece of his fighting style. But Naruto was made of flesh and blood; punch him and he'd hurt, stab him and he'd die. His shadow clones were even weaker – they'd disperse the first time they took a solid hit. And since they were copies of _Naruto_, they were loud and boisterous and eager – just the way things _should_ be, in a fight.

But these "Valkyries" were solid metal, stoic and impassive, with no emotion or character or _anything_ at all! They didn't even care that they were fighting, they just did whatever they were told. And their stupid blond summoner just stood there in the center, completely safe, not even _moving_, just chilling out and letting his metal servants do all the work. He wasn't just a jackass, he was a _lazy_ jackass.

_Hate puppeteers. So much._

After Mr. Lazy Jackass had summoned up his six puppets, Naruto had answered back with a dozen shadow clones. It was twice what he'd managed for Louise the night before, but still way below his usual max. With his chakra being weird, and the fox quiet for once, it would have to be enough.

"That's a powerful spell," the not-a-ninja finally said, into the silence. "But copies are only as strong as their creator. Even working together, I don't think you can beat even one of my beautiful Valkyries."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

At the edge of the duelist's circle, Louise watched her familiar fight Guiche de Gramont.

She hadn't been best pleased with fate's choice for her familiar, and in many ways she still wasn't. He was loud, and rude, and annoying, and she was starting to suspect he was stupid, too. Nothing about him fit the cultured, refined world of Tristainian nobility.

_This is where he fits. On a battlefield._

He loved to fight, and he was good at it; that much was clear. Even so, she permitted herself a bitter little smile of satisfaction. For all his bravado and all his obvious skill, she'd been right after all.

He couldn't win.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Their fight had settled into a predictable rhythm.

Even with six puppets, Guiche was content to commit just one of them at a time, leaving the other five clustered defensively around him. In principle, it was a dangerous strategy: it gave all the Narutos a chance to gang up on one Valkyrie and destroy it. The bastard clearly thought that Naruto – however many of him there were – couldn't do it.

The awful thing was, Guiche was right; without _Rasengan_, his dozen clones couldn't have destroyed even that one Valkyrie from before; now the Jackass's forces were six times stronger!

Although...actually, it was more like three times. The blond bastard's golems might be super-strong and made of metal, but they weren't independent the way Naruto's shadow clones were. Guiche had to direct them, at least somewhat, and six was clearly his limit. That was probably why he'd split them up the way he had – five defenders that didn't take much attention, and then one hunter puppet that he could control directly. And _that_ meant...

"All right, guys!" Naruto called out to his other selves. "Plan four! I'll lead!"

"YEAH!"

And Naruto charged.

The Plan system was something Jiraiya'd come up with, looking for ways to use Naruto's amazing gift for the Shadow Clone as effectively as possible. Normally you didn't need to _talk _to a shadow clone – it was created knowing everything you knew, so it knew what it was supposed to be doing. But sometimes, Jiraiya had said, you'd think of an idea _after_ you'd made your clones, and what then? Naruto hadn't liked it, but it was the only way to get any sparring practice out of the perverted old man, so he'd put up with it.

Plan four was simple: one group charges in from the front, the other sneak-attacks from behind. So while Naruto drew Guiche's attention with a loud, crazy jumping attack, the six clones in the circle behind Guiche burst into a silent run.

Guiche wasn't fooled. Maybe he saw that Naruto's jump wouldn't carry him over the heads of the defending Valkyries, or maybe he followed Naruto's gaze as he admired his duplicates' attack. In any case, he turned away from the original, gestured with his wand, and the three bronze puppets that lay between him and Naruto's strike force sprang into more-aggressive action. With a little concentration, he could easily use those three to destroy all six attacking clones, no matter what they tried; the Valkyries were simply too strong when they had Guiche's will behind them.

Which had been the whole point.

Naruto formed another clone in mid-air, forcing himself to whisper the name of the technique instead of shouting it out like he preferred to, and pushed off of it to gain just a little more momentum. _Now_ he'd pass over the heads of those last two guardian puppets, _now_ he'd be able to get in one good punch while his opponent was distracted, _now_ he could finally finish this stupid –

One of the Valkyries facing him stepped back, sighted carefully, and _threw_ its lance at him.

Naruto started forming the seals for the Replacement technique by pure reflex, but he knew he wasn't going to make it. It was _five seals long_ and he'd never been that good at handseals anyway and the lance was piercing his chest and his whole body was bursting and the pain was

Nothing. No pain. He was lying on the ground, at the edge of the circle, entirely unharmed.

_How? I know I didn't finish the Replacement – I barely got through the second seal._

It had been the clone he'd made in mid-air, he suddenly realized. The one he'd pushed off of and forgotten about. It had figured out what was going wrong before its creator had, and Replaced itself with him in time to save his life.

Shuddering with delayed reaction, Naruto climbed to his feet, just in time to watch that asshole Guiche finish taking apart the fake sneak attack. He turned back to the real Naruto, not even breathing hard.

_If this becomes an endurance match...I'll lose._

_So how can I take him down _without_ breaking all his puppets first?_

And just like that, the answer came to him.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Panting, Naruto let his remaining clones disperse. "Hah...hah...hah...I guess I really did take you too lightly before. Even though you look all weak and girly, and even though you wear perfume, " Guiche's eyes were narrowing "you're still a tough fighter, and I respect that. So I'm going to show you something special."

Despite herself, Louise was intrigued. He'd shown off so many strange abilities; if those were all ordinary, to him, what would a "special" one be like?

But Guiche wasn't impressed. "You've shown us a lot of tricks already. I'm sure they're great for the circus, but we've all seen that they can't beat my Valkyries."

Naruto stuck out his tongue. "I don't have to beat your Valkyries, I just have to beat you! And my technique was designed for guys like you."

Guiche smirked. "Show it to us, then."

"Right! Here I go!" Grinning widely, he brought his hands together. "Get ready to be amazed! Behold the technique that left the Toad Sage in awe, the vanquisher of the Sandaime Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto's number one original technique...NINJA CENTERFOLD!" And Uzumaki Naruto disappeared. In his place...

...in his place...

Riotous blond hair, barely constrained into a pair of pigtails.Crystal blue eyes, a rich pouting mouth. Perfect golden skin, soft as a fresh peach, stretched over an incredible figure. And totally naked, save only for a few concealing clouds of smoke.

And Guiche stood stunned – the whole crowd stood stunned – as the clouds slowly...

...drifted...

...away...

Guiche collapsed, blood streaming from his nose. His golems fell apart into nothingness, their magic undirected and harmless. The blond vision leaped into the air, pumping a victorious fist. "Sexy no jutsu! 100% effective on perverts, guaranteed!"

Naruto reappeared in another flash of smoke. He turned to Louise, grinning. "Hah! And you said I had no chance! It just goes to show that you should never underestimate the greatness of Uzumaaaaargh!"

Louise's kick had caught him right in the balls.

Literally snarling with rage, she dragged him away.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

In ones and twos, the students of Tristain Magical Academy wandered away from the dueling circle, until only a small crowd of boys remained.

"When she jumped in the air, I thought I was going to pass out like Guiche."

The other boys sighed agreement. A reflective silence fell. The brown-haired one spoke next:

"You know...he can turn into a beautiful girl..._and_ make copies of himself."

That time the silence was longer.

"They go poof when they get hit too hard, though."

"So he has to be gentle. That's not so bad."

"Like you'd know anything about it, Malicorne."

"Aw, man. Why do you always say stuff like that?"

The brown-haired one broke up the impending argument. "Come on, you guys, we need to get Guiche back to his room."

The other four grumbled a little, for form's sake, but they agreed. Malicorne hoisted the unconscious boy into the air with a wave of his wand, and the others formed up behind him to go inside. They didn't speak again, but each of them was having the same thought.

_That Uzumaki Naruto...is one lucky bastard._

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Uzumaki Naruto would not have agreed.

"Idiot! Moron! Worthless familiar! Who gave you the right to win in such an unseemly fashion? Who told you you could use that perverted spell?"

Naruto was clinging to the ceiling, a little out of reach of Louise's riding crop. _Why does she _have_ one of those, anyway? _Too dignified to go find a stool to stand on, she'd settled for jumping up and down and waving her whip menacingly in his general direction.

"But that's just it! It's a great technique for beating perverts, 'cause it turns their perversion against them!"

"So you've used it before, huh?"

"Yeah! Even the strongest ninja in my village, the Hokage, fell prey to it! I'm so amazing!"

A near-miss from the riding crop cut him off. "I don't care how effective it is! From now on, you may never use that spell again! That's a direct order from your master, so you'd better obey, you understand me?"

"But, but, what if I need it? Or if that Osmond guy tries to – "

"_Headmaster Osmond_ is the head of this school, a Square-class mage and a famous researcher! He's far too mature to fall for perverted tricks like that!"

Naruto snickered. "Don't be so sure, Old Man Sarutobi was called the 'Ninja God', but when I – OW! What the hell?"

She'd jumped extra-high that time; that whip really stung. Naruto scuttled crabwise to a hard-to-reach spot over the bed. Louise followed, ranting.

"It's no more than you deserve! How do you think I felt, watching my familiar eat his breakfast like some kind of slavering beast! Or when you offered to fight on the dining table? Or when you used that awful spell? If you can't _act_ like a human being, why should I treat you like one?"

Now that was just too much! No one could be patient in a situation like this! "Well I'm sorry I'm such a big disappointment, all right? This wasn't my idea! If I could undo the whole thing, I'd do it in a second!"

Then, suddenly, in a moment of perfect clarity, the answer came to him. That happened to him sometimes, in battle. Really, it was obvious; he should have thought of it right away.

Who better to sort out a summoning problem than a summoned creature?

Naruto relaxed his chakra, and fell from the ceiling to land in a crouch by the bed. "Screw this and screw you. This whole thing is a stupid mistake, and I don't have to wait around for your _Headmaster Osmond_ to fix it. I told you before: I'm a summoner too, ninja style! Just watch!"

And then he got ready to dodge, because Louise seemed like she was more in the mood for whipping than watching. But no, she _was_ watching him, eyes wide and uncomprehending.

So Naruto raised his thumb to his mouth and bit down, hard. Blood welled freely; he scattered the first few drops on the ground, then rubbed the rest on his index finger...

_...because there always had to be a sacrifice, you can't do a technique like that without giving something up, something real and enduring..._

Jiraiya described the Summoning technique as a sophisticated manipulation of space/time, but Naruto always thought of it like pushing down on a see-saw. If he pushed down with some chakra, a frog would pop up into the world. If he pushed down with a _lot_ of chakra, a _big_ frog would pop up. So Naruto called up all his frustration over this stupid situation, this stupid world, his stupid _life_, called on what remained of his stamina, swirled his chakra through his coils, slammed his bloodied hand down onto Louise's wooden floor, and _pushed_.

"SUMMONING!"

It was like pushing something down a hill, or off a cliff. The chakra he'd put into the technique was simply _gone_, drunk up so quickly that he'd hardly felt it go. He tried to cancel it, but he was suddenly on his knees, then lying down, trying to get his eyes to focus on a hazy pink sky. Far away, someone was screaming. He tried to comfort her, to tell Sakura-chan that it'd be ok that he'd be fine like always but he couldn't find the words and anyway the world was spinning far far far too fast. _I should warn someone..._


	3. Chapter 3

_This is...unfair._

It was a hard, unnatural thought.

_God Above and Brimir From Across The Sea, give us the Serenity to accept what cannot be changed..._

Siesta's family home had a brilliant embroidery of that old saying, hung above the front door. It was her mother's work, celebrating her marriage, and Siesta had loved it even before she'd learned what it said.

_I don't have to beat your Valkyries, I just have to beat you!_

Most things in life were beyond your control. You could be born a Noble, or a commoner. You could be rich, or poor. Your harvest could succeed, or fail. Childbirth could be easy, or hard. That was luck, no other word for it.

Unless you liked "fate".

_I'll tell you what I told Louise..._

You have to take the bad with the good, and accept it all with a smile.

_Power isn't an excuse to act superior! You have to use your strength to protect people, or what's the point?_

Why be bitter, when you could be content? Why be sad when you could be happy? Why get angry about what no one had decided, and what couldn't be changed anyway?

_I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and I don't go back on my word._

"Because you felt like it"? What kind of answer was that?

_That's my way of the ninja!_

And what, by Brimir and the deep blue sea, was a 'ninja' anyway?

As soon as the word had come down that the weird new familiar-Noble-thing was sick and needed a nurse, Siesta had volunteered. She'd argued that as the eldest of eight children, she already had all the experience she needed. That hadn't quite been true; changing a baby was different than changing a teenage boy.

In a number of ways.

Take the good with the bad, and accept it all with a smile, right? Under other circumstances, maybe. But every moment she spent with his sleeping form was cut through with sick dread: _what if he dies?_

_And if he lives, what will he do next?_

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

_I'm not going to snap at him when he wakes up. I'll just calmly accept his apology and take him to class, like a normal familiar._

It wasn't quite a prayer; Louise had been raised to rely on her own strength. Call it...an intention. It hadn't been her plan at first, but...

On the first day, he hadn't woken up. Louise had gone straight to the Headmaster and conscripted a maid, to feed him and...clean up.

On the second day, Miss de Godoy had come and gone. She'd said that familiars fell outside her responsibilities as school nurse, and anyway he was physically fine and would probably wake up at any minute.

On the third day she'd skipped all her classes, ridden into town, and browbeaten a healer into riding back with her. He'd spent an hour in a trance, cursing under his breath, and said a lot of things she hadn't understood about tidal rhythms and confluences. The essence of it was that her familiar had more life energy than anyone he'd ever heard of, maybe more than anyone _ever,_ but it wasn't flowing properly. He'd opined that the problem would probably fix itself, and wouldn't waive his outrageous fee even though he hadn't done anything.

Two more days had passed since then.

_Everyone's saying the same thing – any minute now, he'll wake up. My familiar and I will go to class together, and _everything _will be _fine_._

Her resolution, when it was finally tested, lasted almost 15 seconds.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

_No roof this time._

It was early morning, if you could trust the sun around here to work like the one back home. He was lying in a simpler version of Louise's bed, without the curtains or ceiling. _That_ was to his left, and Louise herself...

"You're alive!"

...was to his right. Her eyes were red, her expression split between relief and fury.

"Yeah. And I feel...pretty good!" Naruto gave an experimental stretch, then an experimental handstand, then an experimental leaping-onto-the-ceiling-and-hanging-there-from-one-foot. "A good night's sleep, that's all I needed."

"A good. Night's. Sleep?" she ground out, each word perfectly clear despite her clenched teeth. "You've been unconscious for _five days!_"

"Oh."

"Yes." Louise hissed. "_Oh._ No more summoning, all right? That's an absolute order!"

_Hey, I'll summon if I want to!_ But Naruto bit his tongue. This wasn't like the Sexy no Jutsu; Louise had a point. And doing stupid things when you _knew_ they were stupid things was just stupid. But...five days?

"I've..I've never been out that long before, not even after..." he trailed off.

Louise ignored his unease, or maybe just didn't notice. "Exactly! If you did it again - " she swallowed. "You might die. As my familiar, that's forbidden, even more than your perverted technique!"

Naruto chuckled, despite himself. "Ok, ok. No more summoning, no more sexy no jutsu." _Unless I _really _need it, or it would be _really _funny._

"And do you understand, now, what I told you before?"

"Uh, about what? A lot's happened."

"About our relationship. As Master and Familiar, I mean! The gap between your world and mine."

Naruto nodded. "That I used that much chakra and still failed...yeah, I get it. They're really far apart. I didn't feel the seal respond, not even a little. In fact..." Naruto detached himself from the ceiling, and feel into a crouch on Louise's desk to look her in the eye. She recoiled, looking away shyly.

Naruto scrunched his face up, thinking. "You're the one who summoned me, right? I mean, it wasn't some contract with a god or demon or whatever, and they did the actual summoning part?"

"Not at all! It was entirely my own strength! You are my own familiar, the one best-suited to me!"

"Huh." Naruto grinned. "Ok, I get it. Then you must be...a genius!"

She recoiled all the way out of her chair, halfway across the room. "W-what!"

Nodding, Naruto expanded. "Yeah, I get it now. That old guy said no one'd ever summoned a person before, just mice or birds or whatever. And they all come from _this_ world, right? So for you to summon me all that way - you must really be something special!"

Louise was blushing and stammering, completely at a loss. _Shy one minute, yelling the next - I don't get this girl at all. Oh well, whatever._ "I mean, I already sorta knew you were super-cool, 'cause you're my age instead of being old like everyone else. And you summoned _me_, and I'm great, so if you summoned me then _you_ must be great too, right?" Naruto gave himself one more decisive nod, grinning. _Ah, my old enemy Logic - this time, you're on my side!_ But Logic was a backstabbing bastard: Louise was glaring again.

"I'm sixteen! Second year, like everyone else!"

"Really? 'Cause, uh..." his eyes strayed to her chest, before his Jiraiya-honed survival instincts cut in. _Oh. 'Every lady wants you to think she's 18. Never say otherwise!'_ So Naruto forged ahead: "The point is, you're super-powerful, right?"

As expected, that calmed her down some. "The power of Louise de la Vallière has only started to show itself!"

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Their tentative new truce lasted until breakfast.

They stopped outside the Awesome Hall, forming a little eddy in the stream of hungry nobles. Inside, Naruto could smell something roasting, could almost _hear _the rich fat dripping from - Louise broke into his reverie with a gesture, expression grave.

"This is where we separate. I've made special arrangements for you with the serving staff. Just walk through that little door to the side, and follow the hallway to the kitchen."

_Special arrangements, huh? Nice._ Then Naruto caught up with the _rest_ of what he'd heard. "Wait, I have to eat in the kitchen? This is bullshit!"

"It's _your_ fault for being so weird. If you were a normal Noble you could come in and eat with us, but – "

"You're _still_ on that? Don't tell me I have to duel you too?"

"You'd duel your own Master?"

Naruto blinked. "Hey, that's right, I'm your familiar! Shouldn't I always be by your side so I can fight your enemies, or something?"

"_Familiars_ aren't allowed in the hall anyway; that would be disgusting. If you like being a familiar so much, go eat in the stables!"

"Ugh. I'm gonna go see that Osmond guy." His stomach rumbled; well, okay. "Right after breakfast."

"Why would – never mind. After breakfast, you will accompany me to class. Meet me back here in an hour, when the bell rings four times."

Naruto wanted to argue, but – _hell, I can just send a clone, right? Be patient._ "Sure, fine, four bells, got it."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The atmosphere in the kitchen was...wild.

A dozen people, three different uniforms, all running at top speed between the ovens and the doors. It should have been a disaster, with a dozen delicious-looking crashes, but somehow they all wove around each other perfectly. It was like watching a _taijutsu_ kata – or a well-functioning team.

That lasted until they noticed _him_. The controlled chaos didn't _stop_, of course – they had hungry nobles to feed. But somehow, regardless of what everyone was doing, everyone had an eye on him.

Just like his _last_ breakfast. Or the duel. _Damn it. Everywhere I go around here, it's like I'm on display._ _Oh well, here we go..._

"Hey everybody. I heard I could get some food here, if that's cool."

Everyone turned to look a man in the back. He was huge, his knife was huge, and he was using it to carve up a chicken. Bones and all, from what Naruto could see. He looked Naruto up and down, and nodded.

"You're the new Noble, right?"

_Ugh. Be patient..._ "No, but close enough I guess. Could I get some food?"

Big Knife Man smiled a secret little smile. "Sure. Pick something out for him, would you Siesta?"

One of the maids detached herself from the swirling mob, and shyly led him to a table in one corner. Her platter was piled with chicken legs.

"Please, take as many as you want."

"You sure?"

"Of course! We always have enough for everyone, it's a point of pride!"

"Ok then! I won't hold back!" Naruto grinned, and dug in.

Sixty seconds later, the platter was empty. He'd wanted to at least put back the bones, but Siesta – her expression progressively more and more awestruck – insisted on leaving them in the stewpot.

Even that wasn't enough to break the breakfast machine's smooth efficiency. Not quite. But maybe they were all just a little slower inside the kitchen, and maybe a few more of them passed by that overloaded stewpot than strictly had to. Maybe.

The head chef Marteau summed it up: "I dunno if you're a mage or what, kid, but I'll tell you this: you're sure no Noble."

Naruto beamed. Finally!

"Not with table manners like that."

Laughter rocked the room, but it was friendly laughter. That was worth something, right?

Marteau put a hand on his shoulder, smiling fondly. "Don't make that face, kid. You look like a commoner, you fight like a Noble, and you talk like a crazy person – what are we supposed to think? We had to know what we were getting into, letting you into our kitchen!"

Put that way, it made a sort of twisted sense. But Siesta didn't agree: "Don't listen to him, Mr. Naruto! I knew right from the start that you weren't anyone bad."

Marteau roared out another laugh. "Well, if Siesta likes you then I'm willing to trust in that. She's the one who picked out your clothes, you know."

Soft loose black pants and a tight grey shirt – he hadn't paid it that much attention, to be honest. Blushing, Siesta spoke up: "It's one of the old trainee uniforms, for fighters in the Queen's service. It's nothing much, but – "

"It sure beats fighting in my pajamas. Thanks, Siesta."

She smiled at him again, under her lashes. "Of course!_"_

Marteau was chopping carrots, now, but that didn't stop him from turning half-around to rejoin the conversation. "Anyway, Naruto, is it true that you're from another world?"

"Yeah. Hey, could I have some more chicken?"

"Hahah! No problems adjusting, it sounds like?"

Naruto laughed. "You know, it's weird, but I think being a ninja was good training for this. You're always getting into these crazy situations where you just kinda have to roll with it. Like, the first time I ever left my village, we thought we just had to protect this bridge-builder..."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Professor Colbert came bounding, _bounding _into Osmond's office, beaming widely. _What in the world...?_ But it didn't matter, not really. "Have a seat, Jean; there's something I have to tell you."

"Oh, there's no need, I've already heard! The fa – ah, Naruto's awake! He was sighted, well, fighting with Miss Vallière outside the Great Hall this morning. I suppose it's not an auspicious new beginning, but – "

"I'm sorry, Jean, but that's not why you're here. I've received a letter from the Palace." He held it out, eyes downcast.

Jean skimmed the letter quickly, then doubled back to the top, frowning. _Any moment now, he'll figure it out for himself... _"30 new gold per barrel is an amazing price, but they don't say what they're asking us to synthesize. Just, 'the substance we discussed...before...'" Colbert trailed off. Swallowed. Finally, he managed to say, "Not gunpowder? Surely..."

Gunpowder: the most terrible invention of the last two centuries. One pistol could turn any peasant into a deadly assassin. One cannon could knock down a castle wall, no matter how ill-bred its handlers. Any Noble could defeat such tactics, given some time to prepare...but there were ten peasants for every Noble.

Mazarin hadn't forgotten that; he'd been one of the finest students Osmond had ever taught. He knew exactly what he was doing, and didn't care. _That_ meant...

"It's Reconquista, Jean. The Palace is convinced that they'll win. Prince Wales was the last of Albion's nobility, and even he's dropped out of sight. Soon, the revolution will be over. And once they've had a chance to consolidate..."

Jean nodded, face grey. "They'll come for us. The 'little country' first, then ally with one large power to attack the other."

"Right. This is different from five years ago; I'm not going to be able to weasel out of this. More to the point, sooner or later they'll remember you specifically. I'll push your responsibilities as teacher as far as I can, but..."

But Jean's Fire-Fire-Earth combination was perfect for this sort of work. But Jean was a noted researcher and inventor, even if all his inventions were useless. But some people certainly remembered the Flame Snake from 20 years ago.

Even trying to keep him out of this was probably treason, now that Osmond stopped to think about it.

Well, that was too bad. Patriotism was a fine thing, in moderation; Osmond didn't have the stamina to overdo anything anymore.

"You don't have to do anything yet, and there's still a chance that none of this will fall on you at all. But I wanted to warn you. Try not to lose any sleep."

Jean nodded heavily. Opened his mouth, closed it, finally settled on "Thank you." He stood, walked past Miss Loungeville without seeing her (a tragic shame, in that dress)

With his hand on the heavy brass doorknob, Colbert stopped. Without turning around, he said in a lost little voice, "Do you think it's a coincidence, Osmond? That just at this moment, the _'Shield_ – "

"I understand you." Probably no one was listening, but why take risks? "I think...that nothing ever happens for just one reason. Or as quickly as you'd want it to."

Jean nodded, accepting that on all its levels. The door swung shut behind him.

_And if God wanted us to uncover the Holy Land, His servant Brimir would have managed it six thousand years ago._

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The Academy bell rang, five sonorous tones.

" – decided she wanted to go on being an actress even though she was really a princess all along, and I was asleep I guess, but it turned out – wait a sec."

As the servants went about their morning tasks, his audience had dwindled to just the cooks (who could work and listen) and Siesta (who didn't seem to have anything better to do). So at least there weren't too many witnesses around when he said, "So, uh, what happens with five bells? Is it before four bells, like maybe it counts down?"

Marteau poked his head in from the pantry. "Sorry kid, four bells was an hour ago. You have a date or something?"

"Crap!" Naruto leaped to his feet. "I promised Louise I'd meet her. I've gotta go." With that, he sprinted for the door.

Marteau rocked back on his heels, nonplussed. "I was just joking..."

Naruto stopped, and turned. "So...anyone know where Louise would be now?" Marteau just laughed, but Siesta said, "She's in Iyer, so...History next, for her."

"Thanks!" Naruto turned toward the door again, checked, and turned back with a sigh. "Uh...could you show me the way?"

Siesta beamed. "Of course!"

The two of them scampered through the doorway; one frantic, one probably too happy for her own good. Marteau had almost relaxed when Naruto burst back through the door.

"I almost forgot, there's something important I need to ask you." Naruto gazed up at the head chef, eyes deadly serious. "Have you ever heard of something called 'ramen'?"

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Siesta led Naruto through the Academy at her best possible speed. She didn't dare _bump into_ any Noble children, of course, but there were tricks to weaving through a stream of people and it wasn't hard to pull a smallish blond boy along behind her. Naruto would rather have just run along the ceiling, but he'd've had to wait for Siesta anyway, right?

They almost made it.

"Though those doors," Siesta was saying, over her shoulder, "you'll find Professor de Godoy's lecture hall. You've still got time – oh!"

A pair of arms wrapped around him. Something soft – two somethings soft – pressed into his back. There might have been more, but Naruto was running on instinct by then: he broke the grab and fled to his new favorite vantage point, good old reliable ceiling. He landed on all fours and scuttled back a bit, the better to get a look at his attacker.

Red hair. Dusky skin. Challenging expression. She was wearing the standard black-cloak-and-white shirt uniform, but it wasn't up the challenge of containing her...her. Which his position above her was giving him a _really amazing_ view of. She followed his gaze and took a careful, deliberate breath, smile widening.

"Well. You're feeling better."

"Thanks?" Did that answer even make sense? Naruto had no idea; his brain was still catching up with his eyes. His Jiraiya-honed instincts were screaming _DANGER, DANGER!_ _This woman understands a man's weakness and will exploit it ruthlessly! _Another part was suddenly wondering how bad that could really be, and a third part was thinking about Louise for some reason.

_Another _crowd was forming around them. A fourth part of him tried to complain about that, and was ruthlessly shouted down by the other three.

"_She's talking to _him_, now? What does it mean?"_

"Anyway, I can see you're in a hurry so I won't keep you. Come by my room this afternoon, and we can talk some more."

"_The same thing it always means, idiot."_

"It's three doors down from Louise, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding me. Don't be late." With another wink, she sauntered away.

"_Damn it! Weird foreign mages have all the luck."_

The crowd dispersed. Or, didn't disperse so much as wander after Kirche, panting or glaring. Naruto sighed, and detached himself from the ceiling.

"Ugh...it's not even lunchtime yet. My _sensei_ was right..."

"About what?"

"Er...forget it." And before she could press him: "Come to think of it – we're almost to Louise's class, right? Just through those doors?" Siesta nodded tightly. "Then, if you have the time, would you help me out a little more? There's something else I wanted to do today..."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Her familiar turned up just before her class began, looking rather frazzled.

"Hmph. So you finally showed up?"

He scratched the back of his head, smiling uneasily. "Yeah, sorry about that. We got to talking and I lost track of time."

That figured. Finding him a place with the servants really had been a master-stroke. He probably hadn't made that connection for himself, so: "If you enjoyed yourself that much, then I expect you won't have any more complaints about eating there in the future."

He had no reply. Louise nodded to herself – control, that was what it was all about.

The class itself was a good one, a lecture on the Gallian reign of King Charles VI – the current Mad King Joesph's great-grandfather. Louise _liked_ History; if she put in the work, she always got high marks.

Her familiar, predictably, hated it.

Naruto wasn't even pretending to pay attention; when he wasn't looking out the window he was making faces at her, and when he wasn't doing _that_ he was playing some kind of finger-lacing game with himself. Professor de Godoy didn't say anything, but Louise's temples throbbed every time his gaze passed over her _stupid, ignorant..._

He did try to defend himself, on the way to their next class: "At least I was quiet, right?"

Put that way it did sound miraculous, but it wasn't enough. "It was still distracting! As my familiar you're supposed to assist me in all things!"

"It's just some boring junk anyway. I didn't even listen in _my_ history class, so why would I ca - " which was when Louise kicked him.

Which was when he dissolved into smoke.

_A clone. He was never here._

He'd wanted to go to the Headmaster's office, and pretended to forget about it _just_ so he could trick her like this. It was already too late to catch him, and anyway she had another class, but after that...after that, she'd find him, and he'd pay. It would take time, but that was fine.

The longer it took to find him, the more time she'd have to think up a suitable punishment.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"Oh, Taaabitha!"

Kirche didn't feel the least bit of shame, bursting into her friend's room unannounced. As long as it was her, Tabitha would never complain.

Well, she wouldn't have complained in any case, but Tabitha had a very pointed way of not complaining, once you learned how to pay attention to her. In any case it didn't matter; she was out of her room.

That was bad. She'd skipped her last class, and that was unusual enough, but why wouldn't she be in her room? Where else would she _go_? She didn't even go to town, except when Kirche forced her to.

_Worrying like this...it's not a good mood to be in, before starting things up with a new boy. What's going on..._

It wasn't hard to figure out; Tabitha kept her room very tidy, once you understood that "books everywhere" didn't count as a mess in her mind. The letter on her desk, under the Gallian royal seal, stuck out immediately.

She didn't hesitate. She picked it up, read it, read it again – it was just a few lines – and tucked it into her cleavage. Really, the right thing was to destroy it right away, but who knew? It might be useful later.

Mind racing, Kirche von Zerbst hurried back to her room, to pack and change into her traveling clothes.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"So that's the way it is. I'm sorry, Naruto, but neither I nor my best researchers have yet found any way to return you to your world."

"Aw, c'mon, that's – "

"This is old, old magic, I'm afraid; to unravel the work of six thousand years will take more than just one week."

They were in Osmond's office, of course, surrounded by books. Naruto didn't care for books, as a rule, and he couldn't read these ones anyway, but there was something reassuring about seeing them all here. Like, a guy with this many books could figure anything out, you just had to give him time to read them all.

"May I ask why you're so impatient? From your perspective this is only your second day, isn't it?"

_Patience again. _"That's true, but...what am I supposed to be doing? I'm a ninja, and that means we do stuff! We go out, take missions, fight people! Right now I'd even chase a cat!"

"At the moment, you're still Louise's familiar."

"I know that, but – "

"Which _means _that you should focus on things you can do for her. She needs you, whether she knows it or not."

Huh. That made some sense. But... "How?"

Osmond chuckled. "I'm sure something will suggest itself. As her familiar you're closer to her than anyone; you're better-placed to learn these things than I am."

After that, he was politely shown the door.

He didn't mind. _Something I can do for Louise..._He wouldn't know a reagent if he fell in one, and she didn't have any enemies, so..._Something I can do for Louise. Think, think, think..._

He wandered back to the kitchens, planning to ask the servants about it. They went everywhere, so they'd know some stuff, right? But Siesta collared him right away, asking for stories from his homeland, and how could he refuse to tell tales of his own greatness?

He was still there when he heard the explosion.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

_Both in one day._ Osmond could hardly believe his good luck.

Miss Vallière had been summoned before him for blowing up a classroom. Again. Accidentally, he trusted, though if she kept it up he'd really begin to wonder. Anyway, he'd left her standing rigid before his desk, and was instead kneeling by the corner of his bookcase, whistling softly and ignoring her completely.

Anyone else would have asked what he was doing right away, but not little Louise. _Oh well; that's why we make backup plans._ With a little flicker of concentration, he gave Motsognir his cue.

His cute little mouse ran out from under the bookcase, ignoring his master entirely. Instead, he scurried up the lining of Miss Vallière's cloak to nestle comfortably on her shoulder.

_That _broke her, finally. "Ah...Headmaster Osmond?

Osmond turned the Smile on her, full force. "He's angry at me, that's the trouble. He's saying, 'this person I hardly know is still better than someone as cruel as _you_.'"

She blinked, wavering under the Smile. "What are you going to do?"

He nodded. _Good girl, you asked the right question. Have a cookie!_ "That's the question, isn't it? I could run after him, trying to earn his forgiveness. Or I could come up with some punishment so terrible that he'd never disobey me again..."

"But there's another way."

"You see, he's _my_ familiar, whether he likes it or not – whether _I_ like it or not. So long as we're connected, we live one shared life instead of two separate ones. That's the true power of the Familiar Summoning Ritual."

"Nothing he does can threaten that bond, anymore than I ever could. Sooner or later..." He gave Motsognir the second cue. His whiskers quivered in mute disapproval of the charade, but he obediently leaped from Miss Vallière's collar, and scrambled across the desk to curl in Osmond's palm.

"Sooner or later, that force, which is stronger than both of us, will move him."

Her spine had straightened, and she no longer looked quite so downcast. Good.

"But never mind that. You've destroyed valuable school property today, and not for the first time, either. The faculty will have to spent their time off repairing the damage, you know."

"I'm sorry," she offered. "It was a small mistake."

"I don't think Mr. Kaito will agree, once he regains consciousness. Don't worry," he added, before she could dwell on that too much, "Miss de Godoy reports that he'll suffer no permanent injury. Even so, I can't let you escape without punishment."

Miss Vallière was composed. She'd accept any punishment he gave her, now.

"I think...that you should clean up the classroom you've destroyed, so far as you can. _Without_ magic."

She just nodded, every inch the unbreakable Noble. He thanked her for her time, and she left, and that was that.

Miss Loungeville eyed the closed door, and by implication its recent user, with cool disapproval. She'd never _say_ "I am deeply disappointed that that worked," but then she didn't have to; she did "unspoken criticism" better than anyone he knew. It was just a shame she was so uptight!

He tried to explain: "We use the tools we have to hand. Not everyone can be Jean Colbert, you know." He strode back to his great chair and settled comfortably into it, then remembered one more chore.

"And my dear Miss Loungeville? Send down to the kitchens, would you? If Louise's familiar is there, have him sent up to me."

But he wasn't.

_Good boy._

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"Uh...hello?"

Her familiar's voice! Louise slowly straightened up from under the desk she'd been scrubbing.

"You're back," she said, tone as dead-level as she could make it. Inside, she was jumping for joy. _He couldn't stay away! Louise de la __Vallière__'s familiar taming experiment number one: success!_

"Yeah. I heard about this, and I figured I could help, so..." He made a little beckoning gesture toward the doorway, and in tromped a whole troop of Narutos, each armed with rag, mop and bucket. "Right then. Let's go!" And the Narutos burst into a maelstrom of sweeping, mopping action. 

A surprisingly _effective_ maelstrom. Each Naruto (would she _ever_ get used to that?) seized a little patch of classroom and got busy, carefully scrubbing away the soot and carting piles of wreckage out the door. To where? Wherever he'd got the buckets from, maybe.

The real Naruto squatted down beside her, rag and bucket in hand. "C'mon, we've gotta work too or they'll start slacking off."

Louise nodded. It was only right for her familiar to help her, but this was still her punishment. _Although..._ "Before that, look away for a second."

He blinked, but obeyed willingly enough...and so was surprised when she slapped him upside the head. "Hey! What was that for!"

"I could say it's your punishment for running off, but really, I just wanted to be sure you were the real one." Satisfied, she bent back down and started scrubbing. Distantly, she was aware of some loud, annoying complaining noises coming out of her familiar's mouth. She let them run on for a bit, then overrode him: "You've got to work too, or the rest of you will start slacking off - isn't that right?"

More complaining noises, but quieter this time. Louise was satisfied.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

They worked in semi-companionable silence for a while. Scrub, wipe, wring. Scrub, wipe, wring. Scrub - but this patch of floor was clean already.

Dazed, Louise looked up. The floors were drying, the broken desk was cleared away - even the windows sparkled. Only two clones were left, and they were having an impromptu swordfight with a pair of mops. The original - she supposed - was sitting on one of the drying desks, watching her. _We did all that, in just a few hours?_ It was just too surreal.

"So is cleaning a ninja job too, like walking dogs?"

Naruto shook his head, then frowned. "Actually I guess it is, sometimes, but this wasn't that. I learned this stuff before I graduated."

Ninja graduated young - he'd told her that before. Still..."Like training a woman for marriage, in case she can't succeed as a mage."

"Huh? Oh, no, nobody taught it to me on purpose - I didn't even _learn_ it on purpose. It's just, y'see...I used to blow up a lot of classrooms too."

She looked up sharply, body stiff, alive to any hint of mockery. But he wasn't even looking at her; he'd turned a bit to take in the setting sun through the window, eyes distant, mouth soft with reminiscence.

"Not just blow them up, either! Paint, glue, frogs...I used all kinds of things. Whatever I could get my hands on. So when I got caught, the teachers made me clean everything up myself, and stay at it until I did it perfectly." He snorted. "Now that I think about it, that was probably the best teaching I ever got."

Now she was smiling too, despite herself. "So that's how the 'awesome' Uzumaki Naruto got his start? I can believe it."

"Well, that was just it. Back then..."

A silence fell, and stretched, and puddled around them. Before she could make up her mind about whether to yell at him to continue or to just change the subject, he took a breath and continued.

"Back then, I was the dead-last. The one who couldn't do anything right. The one no one wanted or cared about."

"Your parents - "

"My parents were dead. Since I was a baby."

A strange new feeling was building inside Louise, and she didn't fully understand it yet. _My familiar...has a past. Has a future. Had..._

She'd lost control of her face; Naruto jumped off his desk to land in front of her, alarmed. "Hey, it's not that big a deal! I never really knew them, and anyway, lots of peoples' parents died in Konoha." He stopped. "Huh, when you say it out loud that sounds kinda bad..."

"Never mind that!" she snapped, blinking hard. "I just - never mind. Go on with your story!" _And it _is _a big deal._ But she couldn't say it, not now.

He nodded, a little more at ease. "Well, even if no one cared, I couldn't just give up, right? If they didn't want to pay attention, I'd just _make_ them! And it was good ninja training too: stealth, ambushes, evasion...it made me what I am today!"

"And so you pulled yourself up and passed at the head of your class, is that right?"

"Exactly!" But he wouldn't meet her eyes.

"Naruto..." He winced, then - impossibly - laughed. "You know, I think that's the first time you've ever said my name?" _That can't be true. _But before she had time to think about it: "Anyway, yeah, you're right. I failed the ninja exam - three times. That's usually the limit, but - uh, some stuff happened, and - um, better skip that part - the point is, in the end, my teacher made me a ninja of Konoha and gave me his own headband - even if it got left behind. 'It's safer in your rucksack', my ass. Damn you, Jiraiya!"

Random outbursts and complaints; this was more the Naruto she was used to. That serious face from before...

No one had ever told her anything like that.

_'Your familiar is like a part of yourself, an extension of your magic. Closer to you than your family, or any lover you'll ever have!'_ Headmaster Osmond had said that, the day before the Summoning. The girls had all giggled, and the boys had all groaned. She'd stayed silent, and done a better job of Noble restraint than anyone there.

_And so?_

Naruto was about to launch into some other speech. Now or never.

"They thought there was something wrong with my wand, at first."

Naruto closed his mouth with a snap, and turned back to look at her, face grave, eyes warm. She didn't look back. It was easier that way.

"I was five. We tried a few different ones, and Mother brought in a healer. All the tests said I was fine. Mother tried to train me, then Father - I learned all about Willpower and Intent. But my success rate was always...zero."

She was whispering. That wouldn't do. She cleared her throat, and continued.

"My mother was a hero in the last war. Square class." Naruto's sympathetic look was drifting toward "bewildered", she could see out of the corner of her eye, so she added, "that means 'really powerful'. And Father's Triangle-class, which is almost as good. Everyone expected great things from their children. Especially Mother. But...she had one good daughter, one strong daughter...and then me."

Naruto was nodding. "You were alone, too."

She shook her head. "Not quite. There was one man...he could always cheer me up. Since we got along, our parents had us get engaged. I was six, he was sixteen." She ignored Naruto's outraged squawk, of _course_ he wouldn't understand things like that. "It was my choice. I liked knowing...that there was someone like that out there."

"I always that if...things didn't work out...I could go to him. Or, I thought that when I was younger. He'd be 26 now - probably even stronger and handsomer than ever. I doubt he even remembers some little girl in a boat. But!" She raised one finger, gathering momentum. "That doesn't matter. Even he were the strongest, handsomest man in the world, and even if he loved me more than anyone...I don't want to live a life built around my marriage, around how strong my _husband_ is. I don't want everyone to talk about Louise de la Vallière as _Captain Wardes' wife._ I want..." And there her momentum went again. _To be powerful? To see my mother smile at me? All true, but..._

"You want people to acknowledge you. For your strength, your skill. Not anyone else...or any_thing_ else." His face twisted, but Louise was too relieved to care.

_Yes. That's what I want._

_And my familiar guessed it on the first try._

_We really are..._

But she couldn't help herself; she shied away from wherever that thought was leading. To make up for it she smiled and looked up, trying to think of something nice to say, to reward him...

But something in atmosphere had changed. Naruto was still smiling, but it had taken on a nervous edge. "Listen...I don't usually tell people all that, about the Academy and stuff. I figure, who cares about that? I'll show people my strength as it is now, and to hell with the past, right? But I wanted to tell you, because, uh..." His nervousness was getting infectious; he was looking everywhere but her. Or...no. He was looking at the freshly-washed windows, and the empty space where the teacher's desk had been.

_Oh._

_He knew the truth all along._

_He planned this whole thing from the start._

And very quietly, in the back of her mind: _you could have told him all this this morning..._

Naruto swallowed; she'd lost control of her face again, she supposed. It didn't seem to matter. "Yeah. Siesta filled me in. About your being 'the Zero' or whatever."

_Who's Siesta? And what can I do to her without getting into trouble?_

"But I don't really get it. I mean, you make big explosions. What's wrong with that? I'd - "

She stood, stiffly. "Don't you _dare_ patronize me. I - " her familiar tried to interrupt, but she overrode him. "I thought, I _really thought_ that you meant all that. That you _understood_. That when I told you my _deepest secret_, that you didn't _already know_. But no. You wouldn't laugh at me, but you'll look down on me all the same. You'll take all your power and your stupid _muscles _and try to bring some comfort to my worthless life_. Do you really think that's better!_"

She shuddered to a stop, fighting for breath and control. But her familiar didn't care about her rage, her confusion, didn't care at all, he just jumped right into the gap: "Damn it, Louise, I'm serious! I'd love to learn a technique like that! I could blown up that idiot Guiche on the first attack, it would've been great! He'd've been like, 'a rose blooms for the pleasure of all', and I'd've been like 'this time a rose BOOMS for the pleasure of all!'"

Louise's outrage stuttered to a stop. _That wasn't...what? _She tried again, more weakly: "The sublime art of the Noble - "

Naruto showed no interest, none at all, in sublime anything. "Could anyone else blow up a classroom like this? Huh?"

"That von Zerbst could probably - "

"And did anyone else summon a ninja from another world? Did they?" This time he didn't even pretend to give her a chance to answer. "I'll bet that's just one more way that we're the same! I used to suck at ninjutsu but you know what I learned? I was putting way to much chakra into everything! I was literally _too awesome_ for normal techniques! Yeah! That's definitely what's going on! You use way too much power, so it turns into an explosion!"

There wasn't always an explosion. Sometimes her spells just failed. But her thoughts were too scattered to form words.

_He knew what everyone was saying. No - he knew the truth._ _My magic, my worth as a Noble...so far, it really is Zero._

_And he doesn't care at all.  
><em>_  
>He believes in me completely.<br>_  
>Naruto was still shouting, of course, and she'd lost the thread. "...and we'll have an <em>amazing<em> fight with your village's enemies! I'll have some cool name like 'Infinite Army Naruto', and you can be 'Louise the Bang'!" He winced preemptively, saving her the need to hit him. "Ok, ok, maybe not that exactly. But the basic idea's sound!"

She slumped back down to a crouch. Too many emotions, too little time to feel them in. "You're insane."

"Yeah, maybe, but I'm still right!"  
><em><br>_"Hah. And you think we're the same?" 

Even with thirty clones working together, they'd managed to miss lunch.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Naruto's clones mostly dispelled themselves, when they were done cleaning. It was a relief, really - why do boring stuff when you could _not_ do boring stuff? They could get into the middle of whatever the hell was going on with Original Naruto and Louise, but - seriously, screw that. So they all just bopped themselves on the head and returned to blissful nonexistence.

Or, almost all.

One tried to break into Osmond's office through the window, and dispelled before he knew what hit him.

One went down to the familiar stables, and spent a frustrating few hours trying to figure out why the hell you'd name something that was just a giant floating eyeball a "bugbear".

And one clone remembered Kirche.

Well, not her name, that he'd never learned, just _that redhead, who wanted to tell me something. The one the pervert sage would have liked. The one with the scary look in her eye..._

But Uzumaki Naruto was never one to back down from a challenge. Especially not when he was made of smoke and chakra, and couldn't really be hurt in the first place. So he tried to follow her directions, and then he wandered around for a while, and then he stopped a black-clad servant and asked for help. Whatever, he got there eventually.

She didn't answer when he pounded on the door. She hadn't locked it, either. _Lucky!_ Inside, Kirche's room was lit only by the moons through the window, and filled with the smell of strange, wonderful incense. And crowded: strange rugs and hangings, tables, chairs, desks, and bed even bigger than Louise's. It was so much to take in that it took him a moment to realize: Kirche wasn't there. 


	4. Chapter 4

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

Guiche had always taken great care to cultivate the teachers. He did all his work well – or, to the best of his ability – and he cheerfully obeyed their commands. That sort of thing was important military experience too, his father had once explained.

So it was quite a surprise when Osmond said, "No, Mister Gramont, I did _not_. But it seems I have no choice."

"...sir?"

"You recently fought a duel, Mister Gramont, publically and in the open. You are here so that I may tell you that your behavior last week is _not_ to be repeated."

The Headmaster's expression was terribly grim, but he had to say something. Desperately, he tried, "The rules – "

"Have been updated, Mister Gramont, as I'm sure you've heard, to account for this strange case; dueling familiars is now as forbidden as dueling their masters. Nevertheless! I know you, Mister Gramont, and I know you were planning your revenge. Another duel, or maybe something less formal, hm? Yes, that's what you had in mind."

It wasn't a question, which was fine because he was absolutely right. _Brimir preserve me the rumors are true he can _read minds _and who cares that that's impossible..._

But pride was more important, it had to be. "All my friends laugh at me now! And why not? You remember how I lost!"

"I do." Osmond's stern look softened, and seemed to focus on some lovely distance. "I absolutely do." Guiche sighed shared remembrence, and the scolding drifted to a halt.

But all too soon, their moment was over.

"We have put up with a great deal from you, Mister Gramont. You have a fine military legacy to live up to, so it's no surprise if you get into a scrap here and there."

_He knows about _all _my fights and why not if he can _read minds_..._

"And I can't be too hard on you – I was quite a firebrand myself, in my youth. But of course, there was no law against dueling in those days."

And that _had _to be a joke – that law was how many hundreds of years old? Too many for one person. Surely.

"So I'm warning you now! No further interference with Miss Vallière's familiar will be tolerated. No duels, no ambushes, not so much as a nasty look. Or else it will go very hard for you; am I understood?"

Guiche swallowed, hard. "Yes, sir."

The Headmaster nodded to him. "Good, good. And...some advice, if I may?"

He just wanted this conversation to _end_. "...sir?"

"Your friends aren't laughing because you lost, or because of how you lost. They're laughing because they don't respect you. Earn that respect, and you won't have this sort of problem again."

"Yes sir! Thank you sir!" After that he was finally, _finally_ allowed to leave.

Earn his friends' respect?

Yeah, like that could ever work.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

And so a peaceful week passed, by the standards of the Tristanian Magical Academy. Classrooms remained unexploded, breakfast was allowed to proceed without witless teenage romantic drama, and most of all: there were no duels.

(Partially this was thanks to the puzzling absence of Miss Zerbst, of course; her lovers were always getting themselves into trouble one way or another. But mostly it was about Guiche.)

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"And don't forget! The Familiar Exhibition Faire is only three days away! If you haven't begun training your familiar yet, now's the time to start!"

Had Miss Cheveruse meant that last sentence specifically for Louise? _Probably not. _But it was impossible not to think it, seeing him sprawled out beside her chair, doodling in the notebook she'd given him. Everybody'd been a bit impressed with him after seeing him fight, and a bit sympathetic after hearing that he was sick, but as they got to know him better...oh well. Her familiar was completely unique, and if he looked ordinary, well, that was part of his charm. Or so she kept telling herself.

Characteristically, he'd fixated on the word 'Exhibition'.

"Don't worry about it."

"Ok, but what _is_ it?"

Putting him off wouldn't work, she'd learned that much already. "It's a competition among familiars for beauty, grace, style, power...basically all the things you lack."

"Hey! I have power!"

_But no arguments about the other three, huh?_ "All right, yes, but it doesn't matter; one of the other familiars is a dragon."

That completely failed to discourage him. "A dragon? Giant flying lizard with scales, and claws, and whiskers?"

"Dragons have whiskers, in your world?" Louise shook her head. "Anyway, yes, a dragon. That little blue-haired girl, Tabitha, summoned it. It was..." _Magnificent. _"...annoying. It's too big to fit in the stables, so it lives somewhere else – the forest, I think."

Naruto groaned, shaking his head. "Man, a dragon! It's great that you guys have them, don't get me wrong, it just sucks that I have to beat one in a power contest."

"No one's asking you to beat it! I already told you, you can't win this!"

They'd reached the Great Hall by then, so they parted for lunch, mutually dissatisfied.

It wasn't that she didn't _like_ Naruto, it was just...why couldn't things be easy?

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Naruto's first idea was not well received.

"Didn't I tell you never to use that spell again?"

They were having an intense, whispered argument in the halls between Administration and Earth Magic. Naruto was winning in terms of logic, he was pretty sure, but somehow that never seemed to matter.

"It's the faculty doing the judging, right? It's mostly men! I bet – "

Louise wasn't glaring, for once, but somehow the terrible gravity of her expression was even _worse_. "Listen, Naruto, there's something you need to understand. There are things in life more important than winning! I'd rather you'd lost to Guiche, than won _that_ way!"

"Maybe that's true for you nobles, but I'm a ninja, and 'A ninja uses every device he has'. I'm pretty sure that's one of the shinobi laws, like maybe in the thirties? Anyway, I didn't have _any_ of my weapons or tools! I was in my pajamas still! I couldn't even - " but Louise cut him off, her attention redirected. "Weapons? You fought with weapons, before I summoned you?"

"Yeah. Don't tell me there's some screwy rule against that here."

Louise shook her head. "No – or there is, but it works to our advantage. I've been thinking about ways to properly show your status. You have special magic and power, as a good familiar should, but you look completely helpless. As my familiar, that's unacceptable!"

_Completely helpless? Be patient..._"Um...okay, but what does that have to do with weapons?"

Louise rolled her eyes. "Commoners are forbidden to carry them, of course, unless they belong to a military unit or other special group. If you carry a sword or halberd or something like that, it will show that you're distinguished above to the common lot."

Naruto's face wrinkled up. After everything he'd said, she still thought like that? "I don't really need - " but of course she wasn't listening. "What kinds of weapons can you use? Swords? Spears? Axes, maybe? Or a bow?"

Naruto scratched the back of his head, smiling with embarrassment. "Not really any of those. I mostly just stuck to the basics: shuriken, knives and exploding tags."

For once, it was Louise's turn to be confused. "Exploding...tags?"

"Yeah. It's a piece of paper, but when you set it on fire, it explodes! They're great. Once I – "

She shook her head, pink hair flying. "No, no, that's all wrong! Knives are too small, and no one would even know your pieces of paper were weapons at all!" She looked him up and down judiciously. "No, you need a sword. A halberd would be better, but you're too short; it would look silly."

They'd reached the recently-rebuilt Earth Magic classroom by then, so Naruto couldn't respond to that properly. Which was fine; it gave him time to think. Dragon or no dragon, he was going to win this thing!

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

She'd missed him at lunch (her work had interefered, so unkind), so Siesta took care to catch up with Naruto at dinner. "Catching up", in his case, always meant "Him telling her incredible stories from his homeland."

" - didn't dare let him eat _that_ curry, not after what happened last time, so Neji and I had to drag him back to Konoha. Man, I always thought Neji was just a stuck-up jerk, and when I first met him he really kinda was, but after our fight he mellowed out a lot! Did I ever tell you about him? It all started with his family – "

Naruto's stories were always like that, one crashing into another. Well, that was fine with Siesta. She'd spent five awful days wondering about him, and the kind of world that could produce him. Was it some kind of paradise, where everyone was equal? Had they moved beyond fighting for pride and status?

She had those answers now: no and no. The Elemental Countries weren't any different than here, not really. The strong preyed on the weak. Those born with talent crushed those who lacked it. Normal folk got by as best they could, around the edges of the people who really mattered.

And Uzumaki Naruto rejected it all. He'd settled his own beliefs, his own sense of right and wrong, and wouldn't let anyone tell him anything else. He'd fight anyone, any time, if he thought he was right. Put that way, it didn't sound very virtuous. And maybe it wasn't, except...he kept winning.

_Why fight against things that couldn't be changed? Well, how do you know you can't change them? Have you ever really tried?_

More overwhelmingly still, he really believed that Siesta of Tarbes was worth just as much as, say, Louise de la Vallière. And _more_ than Guiche de Gramont, as ridiculous as that seemed.

" - so he really did have his reasons. It was no excuse for beating up Hinata, but he knows that and now I think they're friends or something. I asked her about it once but she sorta froze – I guess she doesn't like talking about it."

Naruto sighed. "Man, I never thought I'd say this, but I wish Neji was here. If we could have a fight like the one we had at the exam, we'd win for sure!"

_That_ was new. "Win what?"

"There's this familiar...exhibit...thing...the point is, I have to find some way to be cooler than a dragon. A dragon!" Naruto buried his head in his arms, next to his four (!) empty bowls of beef stew.

Naruto, hesitant and uncertain? Something about that was deeply frightening. "Well, never mind that now, you're here with us!" Siesta caroled, a little desperately. "How about another story? I want to hear more about your world, I always do."

"Meh, I dunno, I..." and suddenly he was grinning again.

"Siesta, that's perfect! You're the greatest!" And then he was out the door, dancing with glee.

Siesta, left sitting behind, siezed her courage with both hands.

_This is a good thing. I'm sure of it._

_Probably._

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Louise certainly thought so.

Her carefully-constructed indifference to the outcome of the Familiar Exhibition Faire had lasted most of the way through dinner. Everyone was talking about it, but so what? A familiar's true strength was about more than tricks and performances, after all, so who cared about some silly Exhibition?

She'd gone on telling herself that until Headmaster Osmond had stood up, toward the end of the meal, and informed his students that Her Majesty, Princess Henrietta de Tristain, would be attending.

The Princess!

_The Princess!_

Just as she'd been starting to panic – with perfect outward poise, of course, as required of a true Noble – Naruto had appeared. And he had a plan.

And...it actually sounded pretty good.

And...now that she thought about it, she hadn't seen Tabitha _or_ her dragon in days. Not that she ever made much of an impression, but...maybe the silence had been more silent than usual, lately.

_I've been given this chance, to impress her and prove my worth above all others. I _can't _screw it up._

" - and best of all, it works with your plan too! Kinda! I don't really see how a sword could fit in, but I bet there's room somewhere..."

So she said to Naruto, "Right. We'll get your sword, and then you can show me what you have in mind."

It was just a piece of sharp metal, after all; how expensive could it be?

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"Three _thousand_ new gold!"

The shop Louise had led him into was dingy and badly lit, so Naruto hadn't expected much. But the sword in front of them now – well, however much three thousand gold was, this sword _had_ to be worth it. It was different from a ninja sword: long and straight-bladed, with two edges and a wide guard by the handle.

A katana would slice your head off in a blur of speed and grace. This sword would cut you apart in slow motion; you might see it coming, but there was nothing, _nothing_, you could possibly do to stop it. Hell, the blade somehow managed to _shine_, even in the dim late afternoon.

Well, Louise had asked for something impressive. Naruto knew he was drooling, and he didn't care at all.

"It's...it's perfect! Louise, please, we _have_ to – "

Louise was looking away, expression closed. Sensing weakness, the shopkeeper pounced.

"Your servant has fine taste, my lady. That's one of the finest works of the famous Germanian Alchemist, Lord Shupei! It will cleave through steel armor like it were butter – no mere thief has a chance against it."

_That_ was enough to break into Naruto's admiring stupor. "Thief?"

"Oh, yes! The dread Forquet, the Crumbling Dirt! No one's heard from him in months, so he must be ready to strike his next target! So you see, my lady," _and of course he's talking to Louise even though I was the one to ask..._"everyone needs protection. Even porters and stablehands like yours are going armed these days. It's very fashionable."

Naruto boggled. "Stablehand? Like, the guy who has to – "

Louise was nodding to herself, much too smugly. "Told you. Completely helpless."

"Screw that. Could a guy who's completely helpless do...this?" And then there were a dozen Narutos, all of them grinning. The shopkeeper's shocked recoil pleased him – them – almost as much as his shiny sword. _Yeah, that's right, it's not just the refined 'Nobles' with power anymore! Not as long as I'm around! I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and I don't –_

"That's a pretty interesting spell you've got there, kid." It was a hard voice, grating, and rusty with disuse.

"Thanks, I – wait. Who said that?" The original was clueless, but one of his clones was lifting a dirty, corroded blade from out of a bin in the corner. Which made no sense, until the sword spoke:

"Not a mage, not a commoner...yeah, this is good enough to wake up for! What's your name, kid?"

_..._

Louise, bless her, pushed her way through the crowd of Narutos. Her eyes were wide, but she kept enough control of her voice to say, "That boy's my familiar, Uzumaki Naruto. I am Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière; may I have your name?"

_..._

"Uhhh...Derflinger! Sorry, miss, it's been awhile; took me a bit to remember. Ah...is your familiar all right? All those eyes...just watching...it's a little creepy, to be honest."

_..._

Louise frowned uncertainly. "I'm not sure. If I can just pick out the original..."

She wove back toward the shop counter, where one Naruto was sitting in a daze. She eyed him for a moment, nodded, and smacked him in the head.

"Ow! Wha...ah! Talking sword!" She'd chosen correctly; Naruto the First charged past himselves to grab the swo – to grab Derflinger for himself. Louise followed bemusedly.

"Wow! You can really talk?"

"Ah...yes?"

"Huh! That's...huh. And you can think, too?"

"Feels that way."

Naruto squinted the blade, tracing patterns of rust with one finger. "With what? You don't have a head or anything."

"My hilt, I guess. Never really thought about it." The sword gave a raspy little chuckle, steel on stone. "Anyway, kid, listen. I dunno why, but there's something about you that really gets my attention. How about I let you be my partner?"

"Yeah, yeah, ok." Still feeling dazed, Naruto hefted Derflinger in one hand, trying to look it – him? - in the eye.

The shopkeeper had recovered himself at some point, and popped up at Naruto's elbow. "Well, as your lordships can see, Derflinger is an extraordinary piece. A magical sword unlike any other, which I could not possibly let go for less than one thousand – "

"Can it, you shyster! You think I haven't been listening? You tried to sell me to that Griffin knight for a hundred!"

"That's right, and you know what? He wouldn't take it! Even fifty gold was too much for a rusty hunk of scrap!"

"100 new gold is fine." Louise put in, in a small voice.

"Fine! Done! On one condition: don't ever bring him back!"

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

_100 new gold for a rusty sword._ It didn't seem like much of a bargain. Then again, a Noble didn't make bargains, she made _alliances_, and her familiar's new alliance was starting off well enough.

"We've been fighting like that ever since my last wielder sold me, pretty much. I'd complain about his hygeine, he'd threaten to have me melted down...good times. But it's been pretty boring the last few years. I gotta tell you, partner, I sure am glad you came along."

"You'd been there for _years!_"

"Sure. I dunno, four or five maybe? Before that I belonged to this mercenary..."

It didn't matter how how rusty Derflinger was – he was a weapon, and that would show Naruto's worth even when he wasn't climbing up walls or conjuring up personal armies. Now if he could just follow through on his plan for the Familiar Exhibition Faire, and impress the Princess, everything would be perfect.

"...what's to know? Hold this end, stab with that end. Don't get those two mixed up and you'll be fine, right?"

"Brat! Swordsmanship is a sublime art, a vast continent of knowledge! Men have spent their whole lives just exploring the shores of that great land!"

"I guess you've gotta remember to hit with the sharp part instead of the flat part too..."

Now, admittedly there were some things to be said for normal, quiet swords. For example, passersby wouldn't follow along behind her, treating her familiar and his new toy as free street theater.

"Aw, dammit! We completely skipped out on that other sword!"

"Who needs that toy? You've got Derflinger on your side now! Or across your back, but that's pretty much the same!"

"But the other one's bigger and shinier!"

"You think it's just size that matters?"

_I've made a terrible mistake._ The argument continued, of course. Louise fell behind, staring at the pair in frank horror.

_There are two of them now. A loud, rude sword for my loud, rude familiar. It's perfect, in the worst way possible. Why do these things keep happening to me?_

Resolutely ignoring her own culpability, Louise hurried after them.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The day faded. Derflinger claimed to be tired, and was put away under Naruto's bed. Louise approved his plan, mostly, and even helped out some. That had to be some kind of first. Well, it was a first for him too; he'd never tried anything like _this_! Though, that one time with Jiraiya had been pretty similar...

But for some reason he didn't feel like thinking about that. _Maybe I should make the teeth bigger?Or mess with the eyes some more..._

Behind his back, Louise was changing for the evening. He'd offered to stand in the hall, but apparently a familiar's duty was to accompany its master at all times, no matter what she was wearing. Or not wearing. Well, fine, he wouldn't look, he wasn't some peeper, like – the thought cut itself off. _I guess this is fine. I'll start on the trees now..._

It was an hour later, with Louise reading by candlelight and Naruto holding as still as he could, when they heard a gentle knock at the door. Naruto opened it, of course – what if it was an assassin?

It was _never _an assassin, his luck was nowhere near that good, but this time he wondered a little. The girl at the door was short, dark-haired, and delicate-looking, but the blonde woman behind her had a sword. And more than that, an attitude, one that said _I've used this sword to cut people._ And, _if you don't behave, I might use it on you._

So what with one thing and another Naruto was getting a little excited, but it was not to be. Louise glanced toward the door, gasped, and threw herself to the floor. _Kneeling_, Naruto realized, after a dizzy moment.

So it wasn't a complete surprise when she said, "Bow down, you idiot! That's the Princess!"

He did his best, but no one was paying attention to _him_. The princess – not the lady with the sword, clearly, the other one – stepped into Louise's room, pulled her to her feet, and embraced her tightly. "Louise Françoise, my dear, how I've missed you!"

Louise, bizarrely, _froze_, every muscle tense. "Your Highness, please, I'm not worthy..."

But the princess was having none of it. "You're my friend, Louise Françoise, my one remaining friend after all these years, aren't you? Didn't we chase butterflies through the palace courtyard?"

"Your Highness, I..."

"And get our clothes muddy, and fight over cream cakes? You always won – surely you remember _that_."

Louise swallowed. "Not quite always, Your Highness."

The princess smiled, and released Louise just barely enough to look her in the face. "You do remember; good. I was worried, Louise Françoise, that you might have forgotten me."

"Never! Of course I remember, every hour of it! _You_ should have forgotten _me_, if anything."

She shook her head, fierce and sad. "Never. Those carefree days were the happiest of my life."

Naruto was getting lost. "So, uh, you've met before?"

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Princesses were good people, in Naruto's experience, and this one was clearly no exception. There wasn't that much to it, once she stopped to explain; her name was Henrietta, and she and Louise had been friends when they were kids. Louise tried to throw in a bunch of corrections, but that was the basic idea.

_Little_ kids, it sounded like; their stories were all about playing dress-up and throwing mud at each other. They didn't have any stories at all about getting older together, or going to school, or anything like that. Weird.

But whatever'd happened, it was still really nice to see them together. Louise _never _laughed that freely, not that he'd ever seen, anyway. She was usually lecturing, or mad, or proud, or at most, amused. She was so, so..._Louise_ all the time. It wasn't healthy.

_If I could make her laugh like that..._

The princess had asked him some kind of question. "Uh, sorry, what?"

Henrietta smiled, and repeated herself: "Would you please show me what you have planned for the Exhibition? Louise tells me it's extraordinary."

_Louise said that? _"Are you sure? You're just going to see it again tomorrow."

"Naruto! You can't just turn the Princess down when she asks for something!"

"I wasn't gonna turn her down, I just – " Henrietta was giggling. "Anyway, uh, you three sit over there by the door, and I'll do what I can."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

_Why did this seem like a good idea again?_

"I'm very glad I could see this with you, Louise Françoise."

_Eep. A true Noble should always remember to breathe..._"Naruto is a fine familiar, Your Highness. But he's always...he's very surprising." There was no way to say _this might be the worst thing you've ever seen_ without coming out and saying it, drat it. "Just remember he's good at illusions," she tried, which wasn't quite right, but there wasn't time for anything better, because:

"This is a story...of a demon!"A Naruto was sitting on the ceiling, face and hair shining out of the shadows cast by the moons, voice as deep and booming as he could manage. "Of a monster that plagued Konoha – that's my hometown," he added in more normal tones, then continued: "A name all ninja fear."

And something sprang through the window, onto the bed.

It was the size of a large dog, but the puffed-up fur and lashing tail made it seem larger. Its teeth were like daggers, beneath its snarling lips, and its eyes gleamed with a terrible, malicious intelligence.

Henrietta gasped. "Good at illusions. I see."

"The beast could never be killed, only captured – though many tried. This is one of those stories. This is the story of one young team of ninja whose mission it was to retrieve the dread tiger-demon, TORA-CHAN!"

The dread Tora-chan vanished behind the bed, and a fresh crowd of Narutos appeared. One by one they transformed themselves into lush, leafy trees. Naruto-sized trees, which tended to ruin the effect, but still. Then four more figures appeared from behind the bed.

A black-haired boy, looking cool and indifferent. A tall, masked man, looking cooler and more indifferent. A pink-haired girl, looking annoyed. And one Uzumaki Naruto.

"They tracked it to the Forest of Death! Which is pretty deadly, 'swhy they called it that."

She'd given him some more advice on the narration, but...oh well, too late now.

"There were bloodsucking vines!" Hearing their cues, a few of the trees reached out for the human figures, who swatted them easily away. "But they're no threat to a skilled ninja. Not as much as...the jumping leeches!"

Silence. "The jumping leeches!"

This time, a giant wormy creature leaped out, landing right on the pink-haired girl. Both disappeared in bursts of smoke.

"And uh, after a mighty battle where we thought she'd been killed, brave Sakura-chan returned a winner!" A whisper, a burst of smoke, and a new pink-haired fell gracefully from the ceiling to join her friends. The narrator hurried on.

Somehow this had all been much funnier when she was watching it alone. And somehow she'd pictured him learning more of the lines she'd written. But...the Princess was laughing. _All praise to the Founder._

"None of these monsters bothered Tora-chan, of course. _They _knew who the boss was." The actors below nodded sad agreement. "But that wasn't the worst thing they'd have to fight."

"They came to a clearing," all the trees dissolved into smoke, "and a man came out." A man did, tall, with bushy red hair and bright blue sunglasses. Even the rusty sword in his hand didn't save him from looking totally ridiculous.

"You can never take the vile demon Tora-chan! He's my, uh, he's my sweetums, and I'll – damn it, why do I have to be this guy?"

"One of us has to!" The narrator argued.

"_Damn_ it! Okay, well, Tora-chan's my precious little cutie pie and if you want him you're gonna have to fight for him."

"CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!"

The sword did him no good; he was instantly dogpiled by the other four. He burst into smoke, looking relieved.

Henrietta was chortling openly. "I see you haven't changed at all,

"And so the brave ninja finished off the demon's guardian. Normally this is where we'd get into a huge fight with the demon too, but Sakura-chan had learned some kind of crazy demon-taming jutsu by then," and the beast leaped from beneath the bed, into her arms, where she scratched it behind the ears, "so we all got to go home and get paid."

"And that's one day in the life of a bunch of ninja. Hope you liked it!"

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

_Well, that went ok._

He was leaning against his bed after the show, watching Louise and the princess. Henrietta was watching him, eyes gentle. "Is it a true tale, Uzumaki Naruto?"

"Yyyyyyyeaaaaaaaakinda? Tora-chan doesn't look _quite_ that scary, and I guess he's not really a demon, but we sure hated chasing him, that part's totally true." Naruto scratched an arm, remembering old injuries.

"And the man with the sword?"

"He didn't have a sword, but the man part's true too, believe it or not. I didn't even make up the stuff he said." Naruto shuddered theatrically, which got a laugh. From the princess, at least; Louise mostly just looked relieved.

"Uh...how about you, Miss Swordslady? What did you think?"

She mostly seemed surprised to be asked, but after a moment she smiled a little. "It was a good illusion, of the 'dread Tora-chan'. Very dangerous-looking. But real animals don't move that way." And she leaned back against the wall, in easy sight of the door and both windows.

_Yeah, ok. _Meanwhile, Henrietta turned back to Louise, her amusement fading.

"I meant what I said before; I'm glad I saw your familiar perform. But forgive me; it isn't why I came. I have a favor to ask you, Louise Françoise. You don't have to accept, but I hope you will."

"Of course! Anything Your Highness asks!"

"Not 'Your Highness'. In this...I'm coming to you as a woman, and a friend. Not a Princess."

"Anything."

"But before that, there's something you should know." She hesitated, pushed herself: "I'm getting married."

_Congratulations?_ No, no, that clearly wasn't right. "And you don't like the guy?"

She turned to smile at him, gentle as autumn. "He's a prince of Germania" she said, as though it explained everything.

For once, Louise was as confused as he was. "Those barbarians? Why would you ever?"

"To build an alliance. It's a good match; it will keep my country safe. But first, Louise, I need you to find a letter for me, and bring it back."

She looked away, face shrouded. "I wrote it to Prince Wales of Albion, long ago. I know he still has it. But things are unsettled in Albion now, and at any moment, Wales could – " she broke off, choked. "It's the rebellion in Albion. _Reconquista. _ Brimir break them all! Once they control Albion, they'll turn on us. We're the 'little country', right? You can see it on any map. We need an alliance, just to survive. And Gallia..."

Louise nodded, her hand on Henrietta's shoulder.

With a wrenchingly obvious effort, the princess picked up the lost thread of her story. "If the Germanian Imperial Family reads that letter, they'll break off the engagement. We'll have to fight Albion by ourselves...and we'll lose. So if the rebels find it, they'll send it on right away."

Now, _finally_, they were talking Naruto's language. "So you need to get there first. Get it back, steal it before the rebels do!"

"That's right." But her eyes were still on Louise. "I want you to be my courier, Louise Françoise. Go to Albion, find Prince Wales, get the letter from him, and return to me. You're the only hope I have left, I – "

Louise's eyes were blazing. "Of course we'll do it! For the Princess, no matter what the task, Louise de la Vallière and her faithful familiar will be forever loyal!"

"Hell yeah! Let's get some action!" Under Louise's glare, he modified that to "Let's help out a princess! Er, the princess! Let's be really loyal?"

Henrietta smiled at him, which helped a little. "More than that, I want you to be loyal to Louise. Guard my dear friend for me, please!"

Naruto grinned. _Man, are all princesses this nice? _"Yeah, sure. I'd've done that anyway, to be honest."

And Derflinger chuckled to himself, quietly, from his position by Naruto's ear. "I knew there was something about you, partner, but I didn't expect to get this lucky. One day and we're already headed for the field! This is great!"

_Uh oh_.

Henrietta was still focused on him. "And there's one thing I should ask of you in particular, dear familiar."

"Yeah?"

"In the Familiar Exhibition Faire tomorrow...don't compete."

"What?" Of all the dirty, rotten...Naruto was winding up to give the her a piece of his mind, princess or no princess, but she stopped him with one upraised hand.

"Please understand: no one in this world makes false images as fine as yours. If it were normal magic, instead of familiar magic, I don't even know what level it would be. Far above Square class."

Which was nice to hear, but didn't really explain anything. Seeing that, the swordswoman was more direct: "So don't show it to everyone, especially if you're about to infiltrate a hostile country."

"Ah. _Ah._ Well, if it's for a mission then I guess I can't complain."

No one said _I'm sure you'll manage to anyhow_, or anything unkind like that. But Louise looked like she was thinking it.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Late that night, after the Princess had left and Louise had fallen asleep, Naruto lifted Derflinger from his place under the bed and slipped silently out the window.

"Huh? What's this, partner? We scouting ahead or something? You weren't supposed to leave yet, you know."

_I know. _He didn't answer until he'd reached the ground, walking down the stone wall with just his feet, for practice. Only when he'd reached the bottom, safely concealed among some rosebushes, did he begin.

"Listen, Derf...I've kinda got a confession to make."

"If it's about that Louise girl, don't worry about a thing! I understand completely."

_Huh?_ "No, it's not that, whatever that is, it's just...I don't use a sword."

"Feh! A little practice is all you need!"

Naruto shook his head. "It's not that! The techniques I use, uh, 'spells' you'd call them, I need to use both hands. To make the hand seals, here, watch." He started to form the seals for a Replacement, _ram-boar-ox-dog-snake_, then hesitated. "Or, can you watch stuff? You don't have eyes..."

"I see you, kid," the sword said roughly. "And I see what you mean. No room in those hands for me."

"You're still the coolest thing I've seen here, don't get me wrong, but...we can't fight together." Which was too bad; fighting with a talking sword had to be great fun, and he wouldn't want to leave the poor guy – sword, whatever – rusting in some bin, but what could you do? He was a ninja, and ninja need their fingers.

"You give up too easy, kid."

He'd faced a lifetime of criticisms, some very harsh, but...that was new.

"I don't know the answer yet, but we'll figure _something_ out! I told you before: there's something interesting about you, and that same something tells me that maybe there's a way around this. So don't worry so much! Just do what comes naturally."

Naruto leaned back against the cool tower wall, grinning despite himself. _I was that worried...?_ "Cool. Louise says just carrying a weapon around is good enough, anyway."

Derflinger chuckled, a delicate rasping screech. "She would! Obsessed with appearances, that girl, more than any knight I've ever known." He waited just long enough, then added, "Makes me wonder how she wound up with a dumb-looking guy like you."

"Hey!"

Which was how he really knew things were all right.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

_Your Holiness,_

_The Germanian authorities were not cooperative; they do not recognize the authority of the Church in what they believe to be an internal investigation. Nevertheless I was able to approach one officer unofficially, and learned from her that the details – wildfires, reports by the survivors, &c – are similar to those recounted by Cardinal Mazarin._

_I have found no evidence whatsoever that these attacks are the work of Reconquista, either officially or in the persons of its members. In short, your Holiness' reasoning was entirely correct, and I beg you accept my apologies. In any case, I believe I am growing closer to the source, and will be able to provide you with a first-hand account in a very few days._

_Until that time I remain,_

_Your most humble and obedient servant,_

_Julio Cesaré_


End file.
